


Whoever Fights Monsters

by circ_bamboo, feelslikefire



Series: No Sweeter Death [2]
Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom, White Collar
Genre: Angst, Bond is a shady fuck, Bond is still a shady fuck, Canon-Typical Violence, Diana is a BAMF, Espionage, Eve is the HBIC, F/M, Food Porn, Gadget Porn, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Neal Caffrey Public Menace, Plot With Porn, Slow Burn, Snark, Suit Porn, Threesome - F/M/M, art porn, scones for the Queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-09 13:57:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 107,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/feelslikefire/pseuds/feelslikefire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Should I start, or would you like to?" Neal asked Q.</p><p>"Are you going to draw this out?" Q said. "It's really quite simple. Some years ago, before MI6, before Neal's little bond mishap—"</p><p>"Alleged bond mishap," Neal said—mostly out of reflex, Q thought.</p><p>"You were convicted by a jury of your peers," Q said. "It's somewhat less alleged at this point. Nonetheless, before . . . <em>that</em>, Neal and I . . . were acquainted."</p><p> </p><p>Or: When Q hears that the FBI is bringing one Neal Caffrey to British soil for an investigation, he's fully expecting trouble with a capital T. Naturally, what he gets is much worse: par for the course when you're dating James Bond and you're old friends with an international art thief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was Brit-picked by the lovely [catonspeed](http://archiveofourown.org/users/catonspeed/pseuds/catonspeed) and beta'd by the patient [SailAweigh](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SailAweigh/pseuds/SailAweigh). The pleasure of returning to writing these characters has been surpassed only by the joy of cowriting with [circ_bamboo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo), my bestie in writing crime. 
> 
> You **do not need** to have read "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" to read this story; adequate context is given within the narrative. That being said, please note that the "canon-typical violence" tag refers to the level of violence common to the James Bond franchise, not White Collar--here there be dragons, folks. There will be an additional note in chapters where you might want to tread extra-lightly.

The day that started the beginning of the end was a lot like any other day. When Peter thought about it later, what stood out in his mind was that he should've gone with his first instinct: Never trust the CIA.

That said something, coming from Peter. Peter Andrew Burke had worked for the FBI for over a decade, and while he wasn’t entirely sinless—who was?—he knew, in a distant sort of way, that for the average American, his own record came pretty close. Neal would say that Peter had majored in do-gooding with minors in decency and sanctimoniousness. (Neal would also say that Peter was a square—but Peter was pretty okay with that description, all things considered; it had two sides to it, one bad and one good, and if he was honest with himself, Peter could admit that both applied equally.)

Today, though, he was working on another adoption fraud case. This type of case always made Peter feel slightly soiled, no matter how many times he washed his hands or how crisp the starched lines in his grey pinstripe suit were. He hated cases where kids got the short end of the stick worse than any other kind. At least this one looked pretty cut-and-dried.

"Caffrey, Burke, my office."

Agent Hughes's voice came through Peter's doorway, and both he and Neal looked up from their respective paperwork—or, well, Peter was doing paperwork. It looked like Neal was doodling on a FR-130 form, but still. "Be right there, boss," Peter said, and Neal nodded.

"Am I in trouble?" Neal said to Peter as he stood and buttoned his jacket. "You would tell me if I were in trouble, right?" Neal’s voice was light, his smile easy, but Peter knew him well enough by now to catch the faint note of tension in his words.

"If you're in trouble, I don’t know about it," Peter said. He closed the manila folder he'd been looking at and put it back in the drawer before standing himself. “Why, did you do something?”

"No comment,” said Neal, but he laughed as Peter slugged him in the shoulder on their way out of Peter’s office, and his matching smile was real.

Hughes was standing beside his desk when Peter and Neal entered, talking to a tall, dark-haired man with what his wife Elizabeth would have said was cute hair. The man wore a dark-blue suit and a light grey shirt, high enough in quality that Neal made a faintly approving noise at Peter’s side. At Hughes's direction, Neal closed the door. "Now I'm sure I'm in trouble," he murmured to Peter.

Hughes must have overhead Neal’s comment, or at least guessed at it; the corner of his mouth quirked as he gestured at the man beside him. “Burke, Caffrey, this is Jack Pfotenhauer,” he said. “Agent Pfotenhauer’s with the CIA. He’s got a unique request for the two of you.”

Pfotenhauer smiled slightly, reaching out a hand to shake, first Peter, then Neal. Peter got the distinct impression that Pfotenhauer was only dealing with him to get to Neal, and yeah, he was used to that by now. That still didn’t mean he had to like it.

“Call me Jack,” Pfotenhauer said, as they all took a seat.

"Jack," Peter repeated. "So, what does the CIA want with a CI art forger?" Peter kept his eyes on Pfotenhauer, although he kicked Neal’s foot lightly under the chair. Neal’s role with the FBI as a criminal informant was not without precedent, by any means, but Peter still sometimes had to be overzealous with preventing other people from abusing the fact that Neal wasn’t technically an FBI employee and therefore lacked certain legal protections. 

" _Alleged_ art forger," Neal interjected, megawatt smile firmly in place.

"Alleged art forger," Peter amended.

Hughes' mouth quirked again, but Jack's blandly-stern look didn't change. He looked as though he practiced that expression in the mirror: _I am so far from impressed right now that I am on another planet_ , his face said, and Peter had to slap down the urge to smile at the thought. He’d been spending too much time with Neal. "In the last forty-eight hours,” said Jack, “The Tate Modern, Tate Britain, and the Louvre have all reported discovering that some of their more priceless works have been tampered with, and likely replaced with forgeries." He held out an open manila folder, displaying photographs of paintings that even schoolchildren would recognize: Caravaggio’s second _Fortune Teller_ , Turner’s _The Golden Bough_ , a Titian, Klee’s _Comedy_ , a painting that Peter vaguely recognized as a Kandinsky, and several other Turners.

Peter took the folder from him and held it between himself and Neal, flipping through the photographs. He whistled. "Pretty impressive collection of paintings to have all been stolen at once."

“The thief has excellent taste,” Neal commented, seemingly unaware of the Olympic-gold-medal eye roll this prompted from Peter. “Ingres’s _Grand Odalisque_... well that’s priceless, despite the fact that she may have five vertebrae too many. And _Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose_ —that’s one of my favorite John Singer Sargents. Can’t fault his choices at all.” Neal’s smile was wide and relaxed; now Peter _knew_ he was playing coy. Then again, Neal was always coy. That was part of the problem.

"So what exactly are you here for?" Peter glanced over at Jack again. "If it's to accuse my CI of something, I'd be happy to pull his GPS tracking logs to prove to you that he's been nowhere near either London or Paris, or, for that matter, anywhere outside of New York. And I haven't heard you mentioning anything here." He left the _in my jurisdiction_ unsaid.

Jack's smile was half-smile and half-sneer, but Peter held his gaze anyway. A moment passed, and then Jack said, "We aren't accusing Mr. Caffrey of anything. We just believe that he may possess information that would help us investigate this case."

"'We'?" Peter asked.

"At the moment, the CIA, Interpol, and the Met are all working together, although MI5 and MI6 are also being brought in for consults." Jack's quiet huff let Peter know exactly what he thought of that.

“Wow, that’s a pretty good alphabet soup,” said Neal, eyes widening fractionally. “Why is the British Secret Service’s international division involved at all? Isn’t that more MI5’s party?”

Jack shrugged fractionally. “MI6 specifically requested a consultation with Neal Caffrey, and once that was submitted, Interpol seconded it; MI5 will be making arrangements for you should you agree to participate,” he said. “I’m here primarily as a facilitator.”

"I was wondering why the CIA was involved," Peter said, trying not to make it sound accusatory.

"Wrong place at the wrong time," Jack said. Peter felt the slightest inkling of sympathy for the man, which he ruthlessly suppressed.

“So what exactly do you want me to do?” Neal asked, eyes still wide with his best _who, me?_ expression, the one that could charm Scrooge out of his last coin. “I can’t exactly identify a forgery from pictures.”

“If we send Caffrey out of the country, he’ll need to be on a short leash, since the GPS beacon in his tracker won’t work in the UK without serious tweaking,” Hughes said, interjecting for the first time. “No offense, Caffrey. And he’d need to be under FBI supervision the entire time.” Peter felt a flare of gratitude for his boss. Neal had apparently moved beyond simply “good asset” territory to something more, and Peter was glad to not have to defend Neal all on his own.

Not that it would have stopped him.

"Both conditions that we expected," Jack said, "and of course we'll pay for presumably Agent Burke here to accompany Mr. Caffrey to Paris and then London to consult with the authorities there, regarding the authenticity of the paintings and, assuming they are forgeries, to suggest who might have painted them."

"Agents Burke _and_ Berrigan," Hughes said. "No offense, Peter."

"None taken, sir." As ‘reformed’ as Neal professed (and even appeared) to be, he was still a handful, and Peter would appreciate Diana’s—Agent Berrigan’s—presence. She’d been his probie and was a hell of an agent now, if he did say so himself. From Neal’s face, he didn’t look as though he minded either, despite the implied impugnment of his good name.

In fact, if Peter didn’t know better, he’d say Neal looked downright pleased. Neal sat up straighter in his chair, expression shifting from simple attentiveness to something like glee. “So,” he said casually, “How long of a trip are we talking here?”

"No more than three or four days," Jack said. "We can leave as early as this afternoon, if that's time enough, and including travel time, you'll be back by Wednesday evening."

“I have cases here we’re in the middle of,” Peter pointed out, by way of stifling his very unprofessional urge to grab Neal by the back of his neck and not let go till Jack Pfotenhauer left the building. “Are you signing off on this, sir?”

"I'm sure Jones can handle your cases for a few days," Hughes observed.

Peter sighed. It was true, and the cases they were in the middle of weren't particularly delicate—nothing that really _required_ his personal attention. Besides, CIA agents and possible major theft aside, he'd love to see Neal light up again like he had when Jack mentioned Paris. Unless Peter missed his mark, the reaction would be even better when confronted with the real thing.

Unfortunately, so would Elizabeth’s. Peter stifled a surge of disappointment; they called it ‘work’ because it wasn’t necessarily meant to be fun. "I can be ready to go in a couple hours. Neal?"

“I can be ready by then,” Neal said swiftly. Of course he could.

Which just left Elizabeth. She wasn’t going to love Peter taking Neal on a trip to Europe without her, even if it was brief and for work. And to Paris, no less. “I think that’s that, then,” said Hughes, bringing Peter back to the moment. “I’ll get the paperwork arranged; we’ll have to get Caffrey a tracker that works with European cell service—”

“Oh, MI6 has already said they’ll handle that, once he gets to England,” interjected Jack, not looking up from the paperwork he was flipping through on his lap.

“Good,” said Hughes, “but it still means he won’t have a tracker for approximately twenty-four hours, so we’ll have to notify the Marshalls of his status regardless. Now.” Hughes sat up, leveling a stern expression at Neal. “Caffrey. I hope I don’t have to tell you how much faith the FBI is putting in you right now. Don’t make me regret it.”

“Sir,” said Neal, adopting his best kicked-puppy eyes. “I would never—”

“Save it,” said Hughes, but Peter thought he sounded amused. “Get out of here, you’ve got lots to get covered. Peter, we’ll be in touch with your itinerary.”

Peter nodded. "Sir. Jack."

Jack followed them down the hallway to Peter's office, acting as if he were the one escorting them rather than being escorted, but when he reached his doorway Peter said, "The elevator's there. I'm sure you can find your way out from here."

It wasn't a question (in fact it barely qualified as civil) but Jack nodded anyway. "I'll see the both of you later."

When the elevator doors closed behind the CIA agent, Neal turned to Peter, all but bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. "Peter. Paris! And London!"

"I know," he said.

"It’s been so long since I’ve been out of Manhattan, and Paris is absolutely gorgeous at this time of year—and maybe we can catch one of the exhibitions at Tate Modern, and...” Neal deflated, just a touch, as reality seemed to catch up. “El's gonna be jealous,” he finished, eyes flicking to Peter’s face and holding.

"I know that, too," Peter said. "I’ll talk to her. Let's get you back home to June’s. I'll call and let you know what time we're leaving as soon as they get back to me." It was a credit to June Ellington, the retired widower who owned the honest-to-god _mansion_ that Neal rented a room in, that she never seemed bothered by any of the odd hours or random situations Neal got himself into. Peter knew that was more because of her late husband’s own criminal history than anything else, but he still couldn’t help but like her for it. She was one tough lady.

"Okay." Neal flashed him one last huge grin. Peter did not sigh, although it was close.

On the drive home from Neal's, Peter called Elizabeth, because (he was prepared to admit it) he was, on occasion, a coward.

"Hi, honey," she said. "Is something up?" Her tone was somewhere between cheerful and knowing; Peter reflected that someday he would have to time exactly how quickly she figured him out based just on the tone of his voice and the time of day he called her.

"Well, yes," he said, maneuvering deftly between a couple of taxis and almost getting run into by a bike courier. "It turns out that Neal and Diana and I are going to be shipped off to England and France for a couple days, to see about some possibly-forged paintings. It'll be pretty boring; I think most of our time will be spent traveling, and I'll be home in three or four days."

"Oh," Elizabeth said. "Well, what a strange coincidence. I have some suppliers over in England I'd been planning on visiting in person for the last few months, but never could seem to find time to. Maybe we could coordinate our trips, and I could meet you in London, maybe share a hotel room if that's possible, and have a nice dinner out if we've got time?"

"Huh," he said.

"At the very worst," she said, "at least we won't be taking work trips at opposite times."

"That's a good point," he said. Caterer, he reminded himself wryly. Organized, meticulous, capable of turning any situation to advantage. Still the most brilliant woman he’d ever met.

"And, oh, look, I can get a ticket to London for about a thousand dollars, leaving tomorrow," she said. "That's pretty good."

"It's true," he said. "Well, we're leaving later this evening, I think, but—” _Use your words, Burke_. “—well, to be honest, El, I would absolutely love to have you there. I'll have to check on the hotel room business—they may want me handcuffed to Neal for the whole trip or something else ridiculous like that . . ." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he flushed, but went on. ". . . but otherwise, that sounds great."

"Good!" she said. "I'll call, make some meetings, rearrange some events. It shouldn't take me too long."

"Good," he said. "Good."

* * * * *

Strictly speaking, Q’s name wasn’t Q. Q was his title: it stood for “Quartermaster,” and designated the head of the Q Branch. But like entirely too many employees of MI6, Q had something of a checkered past, and so many names littering his personal history that he’d opted to simply go by Q amongst those closest to him. Certainly, it was a little odd at times, but it worked, and he saw no reason to fix what wasn’t broken, especially since he had so very many other things that required actual fixing demanding his attention on a day-to-day basis.

That was alright, though. Fixing things, making things, that was what he was good at. Q loved his job and almost everything associated with it.

On the list of things Q didn’t love, however, “phone calls at 4 am” were definitely in the top five. It slotted in above doctor’s appointments, but several spots below being poisoned by synthetic snake venom. Thankfully, that last one had only happened the one time, and he’d escaped relatively unscathed.

Phone calls at asinine hours of the morning, on the other hand, happened all too regularly. On this occasion, his mobile went off at 3:52 am, bleating demandingly at him from the nook carved into his recessed bookcase alongside the bed. James grunted in Q’s ear, the arm wrapped around Q’s stomach tightening minutely as Q rolled over, groping for the mobile and shoving it against his face.

“What is it,” he snapped. Oh, this had better be good. James had only just got back from a mission to Syria not eight hours ago.

"Why, Q, it is so lovely to hear your dulcet tones this morning," Moneypenny's voice said.

“Moneypants,” Q sighed. His ire subsided, but only infinitesimally, and Moneypenny's chuckle in his ear didn't help. "Do I need to come in?"

"You do," she said, no doubt secure in the knowledge that she was just about the only person who could call Q at this hour of the day without incurring a string of curse words for her troubles. Ostensibly, Moneypenny was M’s personal secretary; in reality, her most typical job description was more Black Widow than Pepper Potts (though she could switch between modes with flawless ease). "Do you remember the tracker I asked you about yesterday? Well, the time-table's been moved up, and we need it around nine this morning. The person we need it for will be flying in at around quarter past."

"Oh," Q said, and rubbed his eyes before grabbing James' arm and removing it from his body, not without a significant amount of effort; James seemed about as happy with letting Q up as Q was with being called in. "Alright. I'll be there in about forty-five minutes. I had it mostly done, so I'll have no problem finishing it off. Who was it for, again?"

"I never told you in the first place," Moneypenny said.

"That's right, you didn't. So who's it for?" Q grabbed his glasses and put them on. “Tell me now or I’ll look it up myself, as you bloody well know.” Deprived of his human bed-pillow, James grabbed for one of the down ones Q’s head had previously been on and rolled over onto his stomach. Q eyed the inviting curve of his lover’s arse, only half-hidden by the sheets. It was such a nice distraction that he actually didn’t hear Moneypenny’s response the first time. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I said, it’s for a Neal Caffrey,” said Moneypenny. “Do try to keep up, boffin.”

“Neal _Caffrey_?” Q frowned, coming fully and sharply awake. He knew that name. He hadn’t heard it in years, but he knew it, and the person it belonged to. “He’s out of prison, then?”

“Sort of. Works as a consultant for the FBI, apparently.” Beside him, James gave up the pretense of soldiering back to sleep, and sat up, watching Q. Considering that the last time they’d been woken by an early-morning phone call for Q, the ensuing shit-storm had nearly killed them both, Q couldn’t exactly blame him.

“Right,” said Q. “That’s worth knowing. I’ll have it ready right away.”

"I'm sure you will," she said. "Bring it to M when you're done."

"I will." Q ended the call, set his phone back on the shelf, and looked up at James. "Alas, duty calls."

James made a low, rumbly noise in the back of his throat. "Who's Neal Caffrey?"

"An artist," Q said vaguely, rolling out of bed and onto his feet, accidentally dislodging Carly from her position behind his knees. She made her displeasure known with a loud yowl and a flounce as she jumped off the bed. "Sorry, kitten," he called after her, and searched by the bed for his previously-discarded pants. "Anyway. I knew him for a bit back when I was in my less-than-lawful days, mostly by reputation. He was in prison for a number of years, went in right after I came back to England, and now he's out and apparently working for the FBI."

"What was he in prison for?" James asked.

"Bond forgery, but at the time I met him he was mostly forging paintings." He found his pants and pulled them on before going to the wardrobe for a fresh shirt and trousers. “Just one of the tricks in his arsenal, supposedly. Janessa once told me a story about how he conned a lawyer into giving him the Gucci coat off his back, and I'd believe it. Brilliant man. Charming, too, could give you a run for your money in that department.”

James lifted his chin slightly, his eyes focusing sharply on Q’s face. “Is that so,” he said mildly.

Q glanced at James, his smile arch. “It is, as a matter of fact,” he said. “But more importantly, if even half the rumors about him are true, he was one of the best con men in the business. I’ll be interested to know what he’s doing here.” He pulled on his shirt, fumbling the buttons through the holes, his whole body aching with the need to go back to bed. They hadn't actually fallen asleep more than perhaps three hours ago, despite the fact that James had been awake for a long time before that, and so he added, "You should stay and sleep."

"Oh, no," James said. "You've got me intrigued now, and I'd like to meet this Caffrey character. When did you say he gets in?"

Q shook his head. "Not until after nine, fortunately," he said. "So you could get more sleep, take a shower, and be at your best when you swing by to meet the man who's got MI6 so scared I had to invent new technology just to keep track of him."

“Mmm.” James stood up, stretching, helpfully showing off his bandaged-but-still magnificent abdominal muscles; the bullet had just grazed his rib cage, resulting in a bloody but superficial wound. Q liked to tease James about being some kind of carven Greek statue that had up and wandered out of the British Museum, but sometimes he had to pinch himself from exactly how close to the truth that was. “I look forward to it,” he said, and stepped into Q’s personal space, cupping his face and kissing him softly. Q lifted his head to kiss back, his hand lingering on James’ shoulder.

“Enjoy your rest, 007,” Q said, pulling back with some reluctance.

“I intend to, Quartermaster.” James smirked and slid past Q towards the door, not bothering to look over his shoulder to watch Q staring at his arse. Bastard.

Q made it to work five minutes later than predicted, thanks to a certain double-oh agent's wandering hands, and slid into his seat a little before five in the morning. He pulled up all the information he could access on Neal Caffrey, spreading it out over his monitors, and looked over it as he compiled the code for the nanotracker he was working on.

Apparently Neal _had_ been a busy boy. He'd managed to escape jail just three short months before his four years were up, and had almost immediately been re-captured by Agent Burke—who then got him out as a consultant. Together, they'd garnered rather impressive case-closing statistics, including putting away such criminal luminaries as The Dutchman, Ghovat, and Lao Shen. Q didn't handle much in the way of art crimes in his daily duties, but some of those people had committed crimes within his remit, and he was glad to see them gone. And as an art aficionado himself, Q could appreciate the kind of work that Neal and his agent did together.

He chewed on the inside of his lip, eyes going distant for a moment as he finally let the guilt he'd been repressing wash over him. Q hadn't been—entirely truthful with James about the extent of his familiarity with Neal Caffrey. 

It wasn't as though he was hiding any great secret, really. He and Neal had both been very thoroughly spoken for at the time of knowing each other, and anyway their connection had had much less to do with sex and more to do with the kind of chemistry Q had only ever experienced once or twice in his life, sparked by a mutual love of art in all its glories.

Q would have needed a lot more tea and a lot more sleep in order to effectively lie to himself about the fact that he was nervous at the prospect of seeing Neal again. The last time he’d been confronted by someone out of his past, it… hadn’t gone so well. He’d put that period of his life behind him for a reason. Neal, though, was a very different matter. And the more Q thought about the six weeks they’d known each other, the more his anxiety dwindled.

What's more, Neal had seemingly been on the straight and narrow the entire time since leaving prison--the second time, as it were. There were indications of a couple of investigations over the last year, but the notes unanimously said that he'd been exonerated of all charges against him. Q found that a bit difficult to believe, based on the young man he'd known for just shy of two months, but people could change, he supposed.

Especially given a good reason.

Q minimized the folder he’d been looking at and returned his attention to the computer program on his screen, a faint smile lighting his face. Neal Caffrey was coming to London. Q was going to make sure he just happened to run into an old friend while in town.

* * * * *

Elizabeth Burke—El to most everyone in her life who mattered, permanently Elizabeth to her parents—might not be an international law enforcement agent, but she could revise an entire presentation at the drop of a hat, manage a room full of 50 cranky, semi-drunk people with practiced ease, and flawlessly identify her husband’s emotional needs at thirty paces. The first two were a consequence of being smart and good at a job she loved, and the latter came from 11 years of blissful marriage. Right now though, ‘bliss’ wasn't the word she'd used for Peter's expression.

In fact, if pressed, she would have gone with “crabass.”

"I do _not_ drool," Peter was saying as Elizabeth walked up, weaving her way through the crowd of people at Heathrow’s arrivals area.

"Yes, you do," Neal said, rubbing at a damp patch on the shoulder of his suit. "You drool almost as much as Satchmo."

Peter scowled, and just as he was crossing his arms over his chest and drawing himself up to retort, he noticed Elizabeth and cut himself off. “Hi, honey,” he started to say, and then his bag dislodged itself from his shoulder and went crashing into the besuited man next to him, who already had a pained look on his face. Peter gave the man an apologetic look and pushed the bag back into his place with one hand.

“Hi there, Mrs. Burke,” said the stranger, pointedly ignoring Peter. “It’s very nice to meet you. I’m Jack Pfotenhauer.” Ah, thought Elizabeth. The CIA agent Peter didn’t like, probably just on principle.

“Hi El,” said Neal, with considerably more warmth.

“Glad to see you all made it in one piece,” Elizabeth said, unable to repress a grin at the various shades of cross expressions. She came forward and accepted a hug and a kiss from Peter, a hug from Neal, and a handshake from Jack, before looking around. “Where’s Diana?” she asked. “I thought she was coming too?”

“Starbucks run,” said Peter.

“She got tired of listening to us argue, so she abandoned us to go get coffee,” translated Neal, earning himself another dark look from Peter.

Elizabeth grinned. “Ah,” was all she said.

With permission from various law enforcement agencies, Elizabeth had arranged to meet her three agents and con man at Heathrow. She'd been in London for all of three hours by the time they got through customs and hadn't made it out of the airport, but Peter's presence really ameliorated the jet lag and grimy feeling. She was extraordinarily lucky that they would be allowing her to stay in the hotel with Peter, but since he'd have his own room anyway, it wasn't as if she was really incurring any more cost for them.

It didn’t really surprise her that everyone was cranky, though. Twelve hours of international travel plus a mere four hours on the ground in Paris, combined with attempting to keep Interpol from putting Neal into an oubliette (okay, not actually, but they _had_ tried to arrest him), and then another couple hours in airports getting them to London... she’d be cranky, too.

Diana re-appeared with coffee mere minutes after Elizabeth located her group, and then they all trooped outside to wait for the car MI6 had sent over. “I’m surprised they’re not here yet,” Elizabeth observed. “The fuss they made over Neal...”

“Yes, well, I don’t think Neal has offended the British quite the way he has the French,” said Peter. Neal pouted, and Elizabeth patted him soothingly on the shoulder.

“Either that or traffic is just really bad,” said Jack blandly. He was wearing dark sunglasses now that they were outside, and Elizabeth would have thought it an affectation if she weren’t wishing for a pair of her own. Traveling with two FBI agents, a CIA agent, and Neal Caffrey's legendary charm probably made international travel a lot easier, but it certainly didn’t help with jet lag. Elizabeth winced and rubbed her temple when a car blared its horn a little too close by for comfort.

“That’s why I love this job,” Diana remarked. “It’s so glamorous.” She was lingering behind and slightly to the right of Elizabeth, her affect casual, but Elizabeth Anne Wilburn had only been Elizabeth Burke for about six months before she’d learned to recognize that pseudo-nonchalant hover all law enforcement agents had, the one that said they would have their hand on their gun in a split-second at the first sign of trouble. Elizabeth didn’t think that was really necessary here, but she could understand why everyone was a little on edge.

She'd heard only a few details about what had actually happened in Paris, but what she had heard disappointed her. The Parisian authorities had apparently been ridiculous and revoked their promise not to arrest Neal at the last minute, and Peter and Jack had been up all night keeping Neal out of jail and arranging transport to London. Peter had mentioned how disappointed Neal had been that his main view of Paris had been half an hour in a taxi, and that tugged at Elizabeth's heart, too. Hopefully London would be better, but she was on edge, too.

And if she were lucky, she'd get to take Peter on a date. One could only dream.

Her mind wandered a little as they stood around, watching other peoples’ cars stream by. The only thing better than taking Peter on a date would be bringing Neal along; she and Peter had talked about doing just that, but though by now she was almost 100% sure Neal was _interested_ , she still had yet to think of a graceful way to ask.

“I think that’s them,” said Jack, and Elizabeth jumped, feeling a faint flush of guilt, though it wasn’t as if she had done anything wrong. He was pointedly not looking at Peter, his eyes tracking the cars floating past the curb. Elizabeth’s eyebrows went up as not one but two sleek black Volvo sedans pulled up and stopped, their flashers going on at almost the same moment. A man and a woman respectively got out of the driver’s side of each car, clad in nearly-identical sharp black suits, and then Elizabeth found herself watching the universal International Law Enforcement Agent Dance, known to every civil servant to ever work outside their own borders.

Somehow it all shook out with the jurisdictional disputes (as Peter would call them—“pissing contest” is what Elizabeth would have said, herself), and Elizabeth found herself and Diana in the car being driven by the woman, while Peter, Neal, and Jack bickered their way into the car driven by the male MI6 agent.

"Boys versus girls, how not unexpected at all," Diana muttered under her breath as the car pulled away. Supposedly they were going straight to the hotel, to allow them to drop off their bags and, well, Elizabeth herself, before meeting with more MI6 people. She had a meeting with her European wine representative at his office in the Bankside region at two PM, and she was fairly certain she’d be able to get a shower before then.

"I'm sorry," Elizabeth offered, and Diana shook her head.

"I'm glad to have a few minutes' respite from the floor show," she said.

Elizabeth wanted to ask her what her opinion was on Jack Pfotenhauer, but she was well aware that the driver of the car, mere inches away, was yet another law enforcement official from yet another international agency, and probably shouldn't overhear anything more sensitive than discussion of the weather. "Maybe if we both beat them over the head, they'll stop."

"Not likely." Diana sighed. "And, I'm sorry, El, but I hope we've got multiple rooms. We had to share last night, and I respect your husband greatly as an agent and investigator but he snores like a freight train."

"Earplugs," Elizabeth said. "Lots and lots of fancy earplugs."

The drive was mercifully short. Peter’s suit was wrinkled and he had a harried look on his face that made Elizabeth ache; Elizabeth hoped he’d get some time to shower and relax before meetings. Diana looked better, but not by much.

(There was the completely separate and unfair fact that Neal, no matter how rough the previous umpteen hours had been, no matter how long since he’d last had a shower, always looked exactly as though he’d stepped out of the pages of Vanity Fair. He wore other people’s suits like they’d gone through three tailor appointments to be fitted for his body; his hair was never a strand out of place; his smile and pretty blue eyes were always just as winsome and charming as a spring breeze. Whatever his secret, Elizabeth wanted in.)

But she’d forgotten how much she liked London. It reminded her of New York in some ways, with its sprawl and its business and its coolly majestic skyline, but while she always pictured London in her head as gray, today is was as crisp and sunny as any she’d ever seen in New York. They pulled up outside the Grand Arms thirty minutes after leaving Heathrow, and were whisked immediately upstairs to their 4-bedroom with ensuite kitchen and dining area.

“Isn’t this a little out of our price-range?” she asked in Peter’s ear as they took the elevator up.

"I have no problem with spending MI6's money," Peter replied, also in her ear. Neal apparently heard, because he smirked briefly before schooling his expression.

The elevator doors opened a moment later, and the bellhop pushed the cart with their bags out first, allowing them to follow him down the hall to a door labeled “Suite 300.” Jack dropped back and tipped him while Peter keyed his way into the room—and froze.

The door entered into the main, shared room of the suite; the kitchen and dining area were to the left, a sitting area in front of them, and a conference-style table to the right. Four doors—two to each side—opened off of the side walls. The carpet was dark red, the walls were off-white, and the room was surprisingly airy and charming.

What was less charming were the three people standing in front of the couch by the window, causing Peter and Diana to reach for the guns they hadn't been allowed to bring. Peter moved to step in front of Elizabeth, but one of the three—a woman, very pretty, with short, curly hair and warm light-brown skin—stepped forward, holding out a badge and ID in a leather wallet. "Eve Moneypenny, MI6," she said.

Peter stepped forward and took Moneypenny's ID from her, looking it over for a moment, brief flicks of his glance downward. He didn't take his eyes off of her as he passed it behind him to Diana, who then passed it to Jack.

"Looks fine," Diana said.

"I recognize the name," Jack said, and all of them relaxed.

“Excellent,” said one of the other strangers. “Always a red-letter day when I can avoid being shot before a proper breakfast.” Elizabeth looked at the man in some surprise; _boy_ was what she wanted to call him, actually, whippet-thin with a mop of dark hair and big glasses that made his eyes look larger than they really were. But his voice was sharp and intelligent, and he seemed utterly unconcerned with the number and size of the egos in the room, to say nothing of the collective weaponry.

“My name is Q,” the man continued, producing his ID from the pocket of his tartan pants and stepping forward, holding it out to be inspected in turn. “I’m MI6’s quartermaster. I must apologize for surprising you in your rooms, but we were informed of your—early arrival from France and assumed that you might prefer not to come to the office just yet.” He gave a faint smile as he said this, and Elizabeth suddenly knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this unprepossessing young man knew exactly what had happened in France, and found herself a little unsettled at the implication.

"Bond," said the third person, a man. "James Bond."

Elizabeth knew the moment that Peter's perception shifted to him because he stiffened and stepped a couple inches to the side, placing himself in front of both Neal and herself and even a little in front of Diana.

Bond didn't hold out an ID, but he did hold his hands out from his sides, trying to indicate that he wasn't dangerous, but even Elizabeth wasn't fooled; he radiated a lethal sort of intensity, from his ice-blue eyes, slightly-too-broad shoulders, and wide hands to his immaculately-shined shoes.

"Was there a reason MI6 sent a double-oh agent?" Jack inquired, his voice deceptively calm. Peter stiffened even more, and out of the corner of her eye, Elizabeth could see Diana shifting into a better fighting stance.

Bond blinked; Moneypenny snorted delicately, and Q sighed. "Bond, stop it," he said. "Sit down, and do stop making the nice Americans wish they'd brought all their guns."

Now it was Peter's turn to blink; not that Elizabeth could see his face, but his shoulders dropped.

"I wish I had mine anyway," Diana muttered, but the tension was mostly diffused.

“Bond is here at my request,” said Q patiently. “And also because he was curious to see who warranted the invention of an expensive, state-of-the-art nanotracker on such short notice.”

“Oh, is _that_ my present for giving up my anklet,” said Neal. Q’s eyes cut to Neal as he said this, and Elizabeth saw—something, something in Neal’s face, some complicated expression that rippled across his features for a moment and was gone, so quickly she wasn’t entirely sure she’d even seen it. She glanced back at Q, and saw the same not-quite-poker face, and was no longer unsure.

The tension in the room did not abate, though, and Elizabeth frowned. This was getting ridiculous.

She cleared her throat, stepping around Peter as everyone’s gaze shifted to her. “If everyone is absolutely done with our Mexican stand-off, I’d really love to put my suitcases down,” she said pointedly. “Double-ohs and nano-whatevers and everything aside, I’m pretty sure your government asked Neal to come here as a favor, so.” She, of course, had not been included in any plans whatsoever, but occasionally Elizabeth got sick of sitting quietly and pretending not to matter in the face of these things. And she didn’t know the extent of what Neal had done in his past, obviously, but she didn’t think he or any of the others deserved the amount of hoops they were being asked to jump through.

Moneypenny grinned at her. “Of course,” she said, and stepped forward to grab one of Elizabeth’s bags. “Can’t be remiss in our hosting duties, now can we.”

A moment's discussion had the room situation taken care of—Peter and Elizabeth in one corner, Diana on the same wall, and Neal and Jack in the two rooms to the right—and they took turns putting away bags before rejoining the MI6 employees in the sitting area. Moneypenny, Q, and Bond occupied the long couch; Elizabeth seated herself on one loveseat, closest to Moneypenny, and Neal sat beside her. Peter stood behind them, which was fine with her because he was going to pace anyway, and Jack and Diana took the other loveseat.

"So," Elizabeth said. "What's a double-oh agent?"

Jack and Peter exchanged looks; Q grabbed Bond's knee to keep him from speaking. Finally, Moneypenny said, "It means he has a license to kill."

"Oh," said Elizabeth. Well, it made sense, but that was the last question _she_ was going to ask.

For now.

(Her brain hitched, and then replayed the way that Q touched Bond with apparently very little fear of repercussions. They were clearly close, which seemed odd; if she had to guess, she would have said lovers rather than friends, which was adorable, really.)

Peter reached a hand down and touched her on the shoulder, bringing her back to the moment. She knew what he was going to say, so instead, she pre-empted him and said, "You know what, honey, I'm a little tired and I don't really need to be here for the nuts-and-bolts conversation, so I'll just go read my book for a while, okay?"

He looked relieved and Diana nodded at her, so it was the correct call. Only Neal looked a little worried, but he flashed her a smile anyway.

"Good to meet you, Mr. Bond, Mr. Q, Ms. Moneypenny," Elizabeth said, and stood to shake hands.

"Just Q," the boy-Quartermaster said.

"Eve," said Moneypenny.

Bond said nothing, but he gave her a level nod.

She high-tailed it out of the room and into her bedroom, shutting the door, and settled herself at the edge of the bed furthest from the door so she wouldn't be tempted to try to listen in. Opening her book, she looked down at the page but didn't see any words.

Elizabeth didn't think even Peter had expected the level this trip had escalated to, what with the disaster that was Paris, and then MI6 sending a deadly agent into their hotel room. It seemed to be an odd contrast to how quickly the British authorities—MI5, she guessed—had acquiesced to his request that Elizabeth be allowed to stay in his hotel room. She'd had to give her personal information for a quick background check, but nothing beyond that. However, she'd gotten so used to thinking of Neal as harmless, as reformed, that she'd forgotten that other people didn't—something made quite obvious from the sheer number of law enforcement agents involved with this trip, as well as the trackers that two different countries (so far) had threatened him with.

Really, maybe coordinated business trips was not the best plan she'd ever had.

On the other hand, there'd been an—edge to Peter and Neal's fighting earlier, one that had been there on occasion for the last few weeks (again she thought guiltily of her daydream of going out with her men on a date). And Elizabeth did want to make sure that Peter and Neal didn't pull each other apart at the seams. She could have left that task to Diana, who had demonstrated competence in most Peter-related matters, but she didn't _have_ to, so she didn't.

And anyway, Q had said that Bond was there at his request, and then he'd touched the deadly agent so casually... it could mean for a personal reason unknown to Elizabeth and the rest of the Americans, and not because lethal force was necessary when dealing with Neal. So likely the situation wasn't as dangerous as her sleep-deprived brain was trying to make it.

And even if it were, she trusted Peter, Neal, and Diana.

This would work out.

* * * * *

Peter watched his wife go with a weird feeling of relief; he wished she weren’t here in some ways, especially now that it had turned out to be a little more dangerous than they’d originally been led to believe. But having her around was making his life so much more pleasant, as it always did, despite hours in airports and what was turning into a really epic case of jetlag.

Agent Moneypenny started in with a short precis of their current situation, reviewing some minutiae of interagency politics and procedure with the calm efficiency of the very capable, and Peter’s mind wandered a little, assessing each of the MI6 agents in turn. It was—probably largely pointless, he supposed, as they were all theoretically on the same side, but some habits were ingrained so deeply that he couldn’t turn them off anymore than he could fight the urge to sit with his back to the wall in any room he entered, or decide he didn’t need to breathe today.

Bond was the most obvious threat; Peter didn’t remember the last time he had been in the presence of someone so intrinsically dangerous who wasn’t also trying to kill him. He’d clearly earned his double-oh status a few times over. Peter let his eyes rest on Moneypenny’s face, listening to how she spoke and how it matched up with her demeanor, her economy of movement, and came to the unsettling conclusion that, though she wasn’t as... pointed about it as Bond, she was almost as dangerous as he was. She was just better at hiding it than Bond.

“While you’re here,” Moneypenny said, “you will be provided with mobile phones that have all your relevant contact information pre-programmed.” Q retrieved aforementioned phones from his briefcase as Moneypenny listed the contacts in each of the speed-dial slots. Q was an anomaly of sorts; despite being ostensibly a tech geek, he seemed totally at ease with Moneypenny and Bond, which either meant that he was close to both of them (likely) or that he was just as dangerous in his own way as they were.

Probably both, Peter decided. Q was probably one of those computer people who could ruin your life given ten minutes and a good internet connection, if he had a mind to. Great. Peter was just so reassured now.

“I understand your reticence at being asked to submit to yet another security measure when we are the ones who have asked a favor of you in the first place,” Q was saying to Neal when Peter tuned back in. “Hopefully this will satisfy everyone.” Q reached into a different compartment in his briefcase, bringing out a thin plastic sheet, in which was encased two metal caplets. They looked like nothing so much as a pair of metallic vitamin pills. Peter raised an eyebrow, but Neal’s expression of cheerful interest did not so much as waver.

“These,” said Q, “are miniature GPS trackers, significantly more accurate than an ankle unit. They are made of a unique titanium alloy, and are virtually indestructible, though I suppose if you insisted on flinging one into an active volcano it might give up the ghost.” He smiled faintly at Bond. “Which is good, because it has to stand up to your stomach acid.”

“My _stomach_ acid?” repeated Neal, eyebrows crawling towards his hairline. “You want me to swallow it?”

“Okay, that is not happening,” said Peter, frowning and leaning forward. What little good humor remained to him was rapidly evaporating. “I realize that MI6 wants to keep an eye on my CI, but this is—”

“Entirely harmless,” Q cut in, “ _as_ I was going to finish explaining, if you would be so kind.”

Peter glowered at Q for a moment before giving a curt nod. It still was not in any way all right, but he would let the man finish his explanation.

“Thank you,” said Q, witheringly polite in the way that only the British seemed to manage. “It’s designed to remain within the digestive tract for six to eight days before passing naturally. In addition to GPS location, it also provides basic biofeedback data. It’s the first of its type, and if it proves as precise and useful as I believe it will, a longer-lasting variant of it will be standard issue for all of our field agents.” Q cast a brief glance at Bond as he said this, adding, “Though I’m sure some of them will still find a way to destroy them, despite my best efforts.”

“So you want to use my CI as a guinea pig,” Peter said darkly. No matter how harmless it sounded, it was still untested technology and Neal.

Q pursed his lips, giving Peter the look that one might give a child who’s just thrown his dinner on the floor. “As I have already stated, Agent Burke, the device is perfectly harmless,” he said evenly. “Which is why _I_ will be swallowing the second tracker, and comparing the feedback from both devices.”

Peter saw Bond start out of the corner of his eye, but he did not care in the least. Q was welcome to swallow any amount of his own experiments, but Neal would be doing no such thing.

“I'll do it," Neal said, squashing the objection rising to Peter’s lips. "C'mon, Peter. Q's hardly going to poison me with something that he'll be ingesting himself. Besides, I don't think poisoning is his style."

Peter shook his head, barely restraining himself from saying anything else. Although Neal’s wording rang strangely in his ears—why would Neal have an opinion about Q’s style, having known the man all of two minutes? Although, to be fair, if Peter had to guess, he would have said that poisoning wasn’t Q’s style, himself.

“You do seem like the type to try anything once,” said Q lightly. Okay, yeah, that there was a little weird, Peter thought, if not an inaccurate assessment of Neal. “Right. That’s settled. Let’s go on, then.” He thumbed back the edge of the film, peeling off a layer like cellophane. “We’ll need water, if someone would be so kind?” Q looked around at the assembled agents; the request was polite but obviously full of the expectation of its being met.

Peter, Bond, Diana, and Agent Moneypenny engaged in a short, intense staring contest. Finally Jack stood and said, "I'll get the water," in the voice of one whose suffering has been long and undeservedly painful.

"Thank you, Agent Pfotenhauer," Neal said, and when he and Q each had a glass in their hands, he added, "To our health?"

"Cheers," Q said in agreement, and they clinked their glasses before swallowing the trackers.

“Brilliant,” said Moneypenny, straightening slightly. “Now that that’s sorted, we’ve got the rest of the day to get to.”

"You've got a couple hours here, and then our boss would like to meet you. At half past one, we'll be meeting Agent Malhotra at Tate Britain—that’s your MI5 contact—and we anticipate that will fill in the time until dinner. This evening, Q and Bond and I will debrief you on the meeting at the Tate; that should take no more than an hour, and you will be on your own for the rest of the evening. In the meantime," Moneypenny concluded, "I understand you've been traveling for a while. Is anyone hungry?"

"Me," Neal said immediately.

"I could eat," Peter said grudgingly.

Moneypenny nodded. "I'll go pick up some pastries and coffee, if that's okay with everyone."

At the mention of pastries and coffee, Bond’s look of intense disinterest slipped, and he straightened. It was still a far cry from “enthusiastic,” but it was as expressive as Peter had yet seen the man be. Peter watched Q glance at him, fondly amused and a little more intimate than ‘coworkers’ would imply, and added that to the tally of odd things in his head.

"If you don't mind, I'll come with you," Diana said. "I could stand to get some fresh air."

Moneypenny gave her a swift, sharp look, and said, "Yes, of course."

Peter felt a little guilty there—Diana was probably sick to death of his and Jack’s arguments over Neal—but he wasn’t exactly about to stop fighting on Neal’s behalf.

The women stood, and the men followed suit. "If no one minds, I've got some superiors to update on current events," Jack said. He turned and went to his room before anyone could comment, pulling out a cell on his way—the one he’d had back in New York, not the phone Moneypenny had just given him—and unlocking the screen.

Peter relaxed slightly once Pfotenhauer was out of the room, and saw Neal do the same. "I'm going to check on El," he said.

"Bring her out," Neal said, and Q nodded.

Elizabeth was sitting on the bed with a magazine; she looked up as he poked his head in the doorway, and slid off the bed to come out when he beckoned. “We’re done talking shop,” he said. “You can come back out.”

“Okay,” she said, and left the magazine in the bedroom.

When they returned to the main room, Peter decided it was high time to figure out what the hell was going on. He raised an eyebrow at Neal, who smirked back before turning to smile at Elizabeth. He shook his head, and turned to Q, who had his head bent over his phone—no help there. Peter caught Bond’s eyes over Q's head and held his gaze for a moment until he had to break, and then looked back at Neal.

His gaze flicked to Q for a moment, and then he said to Neal, "So how long have the two of you known each other?"

“Is this another criminal ex of yours that you neglected to mention, Q?" Bond said, a little lazily.

An _ex?_ Peter’s eyes widened, but he felt a little smug—no, a _lot_ smug, because really, he _knew_ something was going on there.

Neal started, and turned it into a theatrical gesture, saying, "What _have_ you gotten yourself into, Simon?"

Q looked from Bond to Neal and back again, eyes too wide, and then buried his face in his hands. "You all are so _fired._ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack Pfotenhauer as [played by Karl Urban](http://i.imgur.com/ZeE90CO.jpg).
> 
> The referenced paintings: Caravaggio's [Fortune Teller](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_Teller_\(Caravaggio\)). Turner's [The Golden Bough](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-the-golden-bough-n00371). Titian's [The Crowning With Thorns](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crowning_with_Thorns_\(Titian\)). Klee's [Comedy](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/klee-comedy-n05657). Kandinsky's [Swinging](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kandinsky-swinging-t02344). Ingres' [Grande Odalisque](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Odalisque). Sargent's [Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose](http://jssgallery.org/paintings/Carnation_Lily_Lily_Rose.htm).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The past invites itself into the present; not everyone is entirely happy about it. But Q isn't the only person who's interested in Neal's presence in London.

"HEY!" Agent Burke protested as Q grabbed up a pillow and threw it across the table, right at Neal Caffrey's ridiculous smug face, but Neal seemed to be too busy laughing to care. He caught the pillow neatly, and Q mentally cursed everyone with the cat-like reflexes he did _not_ have. He glared at Neal across the coffee table, but in the face of Neal's unrelenting charisma, his bad mood didn't have much of a chance. He might as well try to be grouchy at a Pride parade. Q slouched on the couch in defeat, trying to hide his own grin behind a hand.

Mrs. Burke shifted her weight, drawing Q's attention, and raised an eyebrow. "Did I miss something?"

“Just Neal Caffrey’s usual flair for the dramatic,” Q said peevishly.

“Says the man who changed his name to a letter,” Neal countered.

“It’s not my _name_ , it’s my title—”

“It might as well be your name,” James interjected, sly as the serpent offering the apple.

Q elbowed him in the ribs without so much as looking at him, and James grunted, flattening his arm against his side to deflect further assault. Inwardly, though, Q groaned; they might as well have hung a sign over their heads saying, _SLEEPING TOGETHER_. “Shut it, you.”

“What is going on?” demanded Agent Burke.

"I wouldn't mind some explanation, myself," Mrs. Burke said, and Neal turned to her and patted the loveseat next to him. She accepted the invitation, sinking into the chair beside him, and then three pairs of eyes fixed on the apparently-not-so-invisible spark between Q and Neal.

"Should I start, or would you like to?" Neal asked Q.

"Are you going to draw this out?" Q said. "It's really quite simple. Some years ago, before MI6, before Neal's little bond mishap—"

"Alleged bond mishap," Neal said—mostly out of reflex, Q thought.

"You were convicted by a jury of your peers," Q said. "It's somewhat less alleged at this point. Nonetheless, before . . . _that_ , Neal and I . . . were acquainted."

“Do you mean that in the Biblical sense?” Butter wouldn’t have melted in James’ mouth.

Q’s eyes flew open. “Oh you are just both determined to be insufferable today, I should have known,” he said, cheeks pinkening. “No. Certainly not. We were both in committed relationships. Though Neal’s choice in partners proved to be significantly better than mine.”

“That’s saying something,” muttered Agent Burke.

“ _Hey_ ,” said Neal. Q’s mouth quirked.

“Sorry, Neal,” said Burke, not sounding sorry at all. He was standing behind the loveseat Neal and Mrs. Burke were sitting on, and if he was trying to be unobtrusive with his hovering, he needed to work on it. “Please continue, Q.”

“Quite,” Q said. He hesitated, glancing automatically at the door Jack had gone through a few minutes ago, and then continued, “I was still known by my birth name at the time, an identity which has since been legally declared dead for reasons that are so incredibly classified I shouldn’t even be referring to them in front of you.”

"So I shouldn't call you 'Simon' in public, I'm guessing," Neal said, a smile tugging the corner of his mouth.

"No, Nick-Steve-George-Leonard-Noel-Marcus," Q said, and Neal winced. _Huh_ , Q thought, wondering which name had provoked that reaction.

"Got it, got it, got it, got it, got it—hey, that's one I didn't know about," Burke said. "Marcus what?"

"We'll talk about it later," Neal said quickly. "So, Q and I knew each other, not for very long, he may have helped me with a—with something I needed help with—" Getting through a very expensive and complicated security system, as Q remembered; Neal had gifted him with one of the paintings he’d ‘rescued’ in the process, but honestly Q would have done it for nothing but the thrill. "—we chit-chatted about art some, and, well, that was it. And now, apparently, he works for MI6."

“I love how you say that we chit-chatted about art when what really happened is I caught you making sex eyes at ‘Portrait of a Young Countess’ and had the gall to suggest to you that Francesco Hayez is over-rated,” noted Q.

“That’s because you’re a philistine,” retorted Neal, his smile creasing his whole face, and Q found his own smile warming and broadening in return.

“You’re still such a pretentious little fuck,” Q said fondly. “Americans think they know so much. It’s adorable.”

"And at the moment, we outnumber you," Burke said, sounding slightly miffed. "Go on. I think you were about to tell us how you moved from a life of crime to working for Her Majesty's Secret Service."

"Peter," his wife said, disapproval in her tone.

"Quite all right, Mrs. Burke, as I was, in fact, about to do just that," Q said cheerfully. "Other than it being, of course, classified. Nonetheless, M—the current head of MI6's predecessor—found me worth hiring despite, as you say, my previous 'life of crime,' and now I'm Quartermaster. Er, I believe you'd call it head of research and development and also arms-master?" He looked at James for assistance.

"Guns, explosions, computers," James translated.

"Gotcha," Burke said, and Mrs. Burke nodded.

“You see now why we chose to come see you at your hotel,” said Q. “Since the last thing I needed was to be called by a dead man’s name in front of my entire department.” He smiled at Neal, and then inclined his head at the Burkes. “We should probably continue this conversation later,” he said delicately.

He wondered if Neal was remembering the same thing as him: Q—or Simon, as he'd been then—had been madly in love with the Markhams, just as Neal was with the lovely Kate Moreau. He and Neal had hit it off immediately and spectacularly while wandering through the _Galleria d’Arte Moderna_ in Milan. David, Janessa, and Kate had found Neal and Q sitting on a bench in the foyer, arguing animatedly over how much Andy Warhol’s pop art movement actually owed to the mid-Impressionist brush technique of pointillism. Kate and Neal had been supposedly planning a con, while the Markhams were just indulging their art-loving boyfriend in a day-trip, but like seeks like, and Q had been thrilled to find someone who loved art so thoroughly for its own sake.

Q had never been in it for the con, of course; not like Neal and Kate. But he’d so enjoyed talking to Neal, a kindred spirit to shine against, and the month and a half they had all spent in Milan had been rich and rewarding. Even though things had gone pear-shaped for Q shortly thereafter, he very much hoped Neal was itching just as badly to spend more time catching up, but not here. He wondered how hard it’d be to get time alone, without Agent Burke hovering.

“I’d like that,” said Mrs. Burke. Q blinked, bumped out of his brief reverie to see Neal turning his head to look at her, and she gave them both a raised eyebrow and a smile by way of response. “What? Are you trying to tell me you’re going to be all work and no play, Neal?”

“I would never dream of misleading you so shamefully, Elizabeth,” Neal said. It sounded surprisingly sincere to Q, but Mrs. Burke just reached out to pat Neal’s arm.

“Later, then,” said Burke; maybe he was looking to avoid any more intimate revelations with strangers before they’d been in England for a full day. Q couldn’t really blame him. “Diana and Agent Moneypenny should be back soon, I’m guessing. And we’ll be off to meet with MI5 right after that.”

“Correct,” said Q. “The contact information for everyone you will likely need has already been input into your mobiles, including mine and Moneypenny’s numbers.”

“Good,” said Burke. “Then if no one has any objections, I’m going to go shower.” Q watched Neal wince, guessing that Burke hadn’t gotten the chance to shower this morning between wrestling with Interpol and hustling Neal to the airport. From the sounds of running pipes coming through the wall, Jack had ended his phone call and had the same idea.

“Go on, honey,” said Mrs. Burke. “I’ll save you some pastries.”

“You’ll have to fight 007 for them, he has quite the sweet tooth,” said Q blandly. James shot him a dirty look, but it had no teeth. Q tried to bite back a smile and failed, succeeding only in earning himself a pair of raised eyebrows from Neal, which Q answered with a shake of his head.

There would be questions later, he thought. That was alright. If Neal was still remotely the same person he knew five years ago, the questions would all be of the sort that Q would take great pleasure in answering, to say nothing of asking his own.

* * * * *

On the whole, it had easily been one of the most memorable mornings Elizabeth had experienced in the past six months (and that was saying something, when you had Peter and Neal in your life); sadly, “memorable” most often translated to “exhausting,” and today was no exception. She started to come down a little after Peter disappeared into the bathroom and the MI6 contingent left; across from her, Neal didn’t look much better off, some fatigue finally showing through his perpetual good-natured cheer. Elizabeth was just considering a nap when Diana re-appeared with food. One bite was more than enough to convince her to pick food and coffee over more sleep.

"I have _got_ to meet the person who made these scones," Elizabeth said around a mouthful of scone.

"The owner’s name is Adrienne," Diana said. "Australian, I think. There are a couple dozen flavors of scones available at any given moment. I don't think she bakes all of them herself anymore, but Eve says that she owns the shop and did come up with the recipes."

"Eve, huh?" said Peter’s voice from behind Elizabeth, and she jumped.

"I thought I heard a door open," she said, turning around to smile up at her husband. He’d changed suits, she noted, the jacket draped over one arm, his skin still pink in places from the heat of his shower. She held out a plate, containing one mostly-full scone and several smallish pieces of other scone. "Here. We're letting everyone try all the flavors. Yours is apple pie; Neal's is honey-fig; Diana has coconut-espresso, and mine is red wine and dark chocolate."

"Don't some of these stretch the definition of what a scone actually is?" Peter asked, apparently rhetorically as he accepted the plate and took a bite of his scone. "On the other hand," he said, "this is about the best thing I've ever tasted in my life, so I don't care."

Elizabeth chuckled. As if that was his cue, Peter leaned in and kissed her, deeper and more lingering than she was expecting. He stayed bent close for a moment, resting his temple against hers for a moment before finally straightening again. Elizabeth blinked up at him and smiled as he pulled away. “I love you too, Peter,” she said in cheerful bemusement, and Peter grinned at her.

“So,” said Neal. “MI6. That happened.” He’d apparently perked up again with the help of some coffee, though the circles under his eyes were still darker than Elizabeth liked.

“Yeah it did,” said Diana, sinking into an empty chair with a sigh. “Beats the pants off Interpol, though, gotta say.”

“Not a difficult bar to surpass,” grumbled Peter.

He was still smarting at the gall of Interpol, Elizabeth could tell. Not that she blamed him for that one bit. Just the small re-telling she’d heard had been enough to get her blood up. The nerve of them, to invite Neal to France with certain reassurances, and then back off on all of them once they'd gotten what they wanted from him. Elizabeth could hardly blame Peter for how surly he’d been towards the MI6 agents; just because she wasn’t in position to be protective of Neal didn’t mean she wasn’t upset on his behalf.

She hoped the British authorities weren’t considering treating Neal the same way. Peter Burke didn’t get angry often, but when he did, people didn’t forget in a hurry. Though she did hope that Peter would back off on the possessiveness a little, at least in public. He’d let himself go overboard a bit since they’d left the states, just from what she could see.

"El, are you going to be okay by yourself while we're at MI5 and then the Tate?" he asked.

Elizabeth nodded. "I'll probably take a nap, and maybe do a little sight-seeing before my meeting at two. I should be fine."

"I can make a list for you," Neal said instantly, perking up at the mention of sight-seeing. “We need to get Oyster cards so we can get around on the Tube—”

“Believe it or not, Peter and I have been to London before, Neal,” said Elizabeth, unable to keep from grinning at Neal’s unquenchable enthusiasm.

“Not like I have,” said Neal, all wide eyes and charm, and Diana snorted into her coffee.

“Thank God for small mercies,” said Peter. Neal grinned at him; Elizabeth watched them both over the lip of her coffee cup, noting how Peter’s irritation softened whenever Neal flashed that smile at him. Neal had that effect on most people, but especially on Peter. It had been one of her first clues as to how her husband was coming to feel about Neal.

She honestly didn’t know how Neal could be in such a good mood, after the past day, though she supposed bumping unexpectedly into an old friend would put a bounce into anyone’s step. Especially an old friend as complicated as the enigmatic Q. Who went by nothing more than a letter, anyway?

The door to Jack’s bedroom creaked, and all eyes turned to watch Jack re-enter the main living area, looking freshly showered and shaven. “Sorry I took so long,” said Jack, pulling the door shut behind him. Elizabeth felt Peter stiffen almost imperceptibly by her right elbow, and remembered that he didn’t seem to care for the CIA agent very much.

“It’s fine, I think we all needed a few minutes,” said Diana. She had her professional face on, just like that; apparently Peter wasn’t the only one unwilling to let their guard down around Jack. Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the guy.

“We saved you a scone,” she said, getting up off the couch. She crossed to where the bag of scones from A Piece of Cake still sat by Neal’s thigh, retrieving it and eliciting a mournful sigh from Neal in the process. “Oh, don’t you start,” she told him, then redirected to Jack again. “Orange-cranberry; they’re _amazing._ Also, we got you coffee.”

Jack blinked at her, and then smiled for what Elizabeth thought was the first time since she’d met him; it took at least five years off his age. “Thanks,” he said.

“Of course,” said Elizabeth, and did not add, _don’t prove my husband right, please_ as she returned to her seat and her coffee.

"I called Agent Malhotra a few minutes ago to confirm," Jack said, after a couple of bites of scone. "We're still meeting him at noon, and I think he said he'd be ordering in lunch, but if that doesn't happen we can probably grab something on the way to the museum."

Amit Malhotra was the MI5 contact Peter and the rest of the team would be working with, if Elizabeth remembered correctly. "That sounds good," Peter said, and Diana and Neal nodded in agreement. "When do we need to leave?"

"MI5's car will be here at 11:30," Jack said.

Elizabeth looked at her watch, which said that it was 5:25 am, and then realized she hadn't reset it to London time. She fiddled with the buttons for a moment as she noted, "You’ve got most of an hour to kill."

"I'm okay with not doing anything," Neal said.

"Ditto," said Diana.

"I don't suppose there's any football on this early in the day," Jack said, shaking his head.

Elizabeth frowned. Soccer, really? She looked up; Peter was looking at Jack with the same questioning look on his face, and Jack said, "You spend too much time in Europe and you get bitten by the bug."

Oh. Well, that made sense.

“Well,” said Peter, “it’s not like we have anything better to do than see what kind of terrible crap they play on TV at 10:30 in the morning.”

“You do that,” said Elizabeth. “I am going to take a nap.” She rose, leaning in to collect a kiss from Peter.

“Lucky,” muttered Diana.

“Have fun with art crime,” Elizabeth said cheerfully, and retreated into the bedroom, leaving everyone else to sort out what might be worth watching on TV.

* * * * *

Q and James returned to MI6 with Moneypenny, who had separated the pastries out into two bags, one for the Americans and one to take back to work with them. Once at HQ, she picked out her particular favorite and M's favorite—lemon-ginger for her and raspberry-cream for him—and handed the bag back to James, who looked as if she'd torn out a portion of his soul.

"Stop being dramatic. I'm sure she left you the walnut-chevre one," Q said.

Moneypenny laughed, and got into the elevator going up, while Q and James waited for one to go down.

Once they were alone in the elevator—well, alone except for the security cameras, but Q could erase the footage later—he leaned over and pressed a kiss to James’ lips, lingering just long enough to feel heat flush his face before pulling away.

"What was that for?" James asked.

Q shrugged, not quite nonchalant. "I wanted to," he said. "Wanted to remind myself of the present, and not the past."

“You seemed quite taken with the past when you had it in front of you,” James pointed out. His tone was mild, but his face was a little too flat.

Q looked at him searchingly. “James,” he said, choosing his words with care, “You’re not jealous of a man I was friends with for six weeks all of five years ago. Are you?”

“Not jealous,” James said, and relented a moment later, smiling lop-sidedly at Q as he slipped the hand not currently holding a bag of scones into his suit pocket. “You were just a bit not yourself for a few minutes there.”

“That doesn’t actually make any sense,” Q pointed out, as the lift pinged to announce its arrival at their level and the doors slid open. James shrugged by way of response, waiting for Q to exit first before following after him into the hallway. Q lingered, bumping their hips together as they turned in the direction of Q Branch and Q’s waiting workload. “James. Out with it.”

“I did already,” James said, glancing sideways at him. “You’re the one who’s still acting like there’s nothing to comment on.”

Q pursed his lips, and slowed, eyes slipping away from James’ face to contemplate the carpeting at their feet. MI6 had only been in the new headquarters for a few short months, and the carpeting had not yet had time to acquire the downtrodden aspect of their original location at Vauxhall Cross. But it wasn’t the carpeting Q was seeing, really.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t totally honest with you this morning,” Q said after a few moments, a soft sigh escaping on the heels of his words. “I just... I wasn’t sure there would be anything to tell. I wasn’t even sure he would recognize me.”

"Hm," James said, but nothing more, even when Q looked right at him; he continued to stare at the paneling on the wall as if it held all the secrets of the universe, or at least the exploding pen Q had promised he would never, ever get.

“James,” said Q, a bit sharper than he meant to.

James finally broke out of whatever distant world he’d slipped off to, his eyes cutting sideways to Q’s face. “I’m not angry at you, Q,” he said. “I just don’t think I see why you were afraid to tell me that you were once quite good friends with Neal.”

Q pursed his lips, but James was present again, now, weight and attention behind his words, and finally Q nodded. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I suppose I wanted to let the past stay the past, if things fell out that way. I wasn’t expecting to be reminded of those days quite so strongly.”

“Ah,” said James, in that way of his that made things clear as mud. But he did give Q a small twist of a smile.

They fell silent again until they were just outside his office, and Q straightened, reaching for his keys. "Come," he said, unlocking the door to let them in. "I've got plates; we can eat the scones like responsible adults."

James laughed and caught the door before it could close in his face.

Q's plates were mismatched, squirreled away from the canteen; one had an apple in the middle, and he handed that one to James, with the walnut-chevre scone and one of the napkins from the bag. The one he kept for himself had a collage of tiny orange-and-yellow flowers and looked exactly like his parents' wedding set, even though their actual dishes had long since gone to a charity shop. It clashed somewhat with his blueberry-cardamom scone, but he didn't care.

Q had work to do, of course; he and Moneypenny had really only been doing a favor for MI5, after all, and were not technically involved in the investigation of possible art theft at all. (Q had made the best of the situation by volunteering Neal as his perfect guinea pig to test one of his nanotrackers, of course. There was much to be said for a man who loved his work.)

He had a mountain of programming code to get to, to say nothing of the four weapon prototypes waiting for him to look over before they would be approved for production, and the pile of paperwork that needed to be filled out by week’s end; in short, he’d be here all day if he lost track of things. But he didn’t let any of that stop him from sitting for a few minutes to eat a piece of culinary perfection with the man who was always the best part of his day.

First, though, Q needed a pick-me-up. He hopped up from his chair and went to the mini-fridge against the wall. “Oh good lord,” said James, making a face as he spied the bright green can Q retrieved out of the fridge. “Not that god-awful swill again.”

“We can’t all live off of sex and the bitter tears of our enemies, James,” said Q, flipping the tab atop his energy drink to open it. “And this is at least good for you instead of destroying you from the inside; the taste is quite good when you get used to it.”

The corner of James’ mouth twisted, like he’d just stepped in something foul. “If by ‘good’ you mean ‘hasn’t yet been proven to cause cancer,’” he muttered.

“This from the man who has a bucket list of ‘moving vehicles I have yet to throw myself from,’” observed Q. James snorted.

After an assessment of its employees’ well-being by MI6’s Occupational Health team had pronounced nearly half of the research teams as “pathetically unhealthy” (Q’s words, not Dr. Hodgkins’), M had decided that, for some reason, allowing his employees to languish in their cubicles was no longer acceptable. Q himself had acquired a jogging habit during his years prior to employment at MI6 (though his diet was nothing to be particularly proud of), but he knew for a fact that a good third of his employees would only run if something large and toothy was chasing them, and they weren’t much better off in any other facet of a healthful life. The heads of Q-Branch and Biotech—which is to say, Q, his two most trusted underlings, and Timothy Hayward, the triathlon-running madman who headed up the medical and biotechnology department—had put their heads together to come up with some means of improving the well-being of MI6’s employees.

(Health and wellness was so far outside of Q’s line of work as to be a joke, so he’d been quite surprised when Tim had asked Q for his input, but once Mark, his second, had pointed out that when Q said “jump,” his employees said “how high,” he’d decided that perhaps having his name on a round of health initiatives wasn’t the stupidest thing he’d heard all year.)

The theoretically-healthy energy drink Biotech had produced was only one of the wellness initiatives to ultimately be instituted, along with monetary bonuses for every employee who logged a minimum number of hours in the gym and healthier options in the employee cafeteria. Q, in an effort to set a good example for his staff (and also to perhaps not drink eighteen liters of tea per day, every day) had dutifully started drinking the “Q Goo,” as it had been dubbed, and then surprised himself with starting to actually _like_ the stuff.

Exactly no one had been surprised that James had not shared his new tastes, however. Neither had Moneypenny, though she at least didn’t look as though she wanted to be sick all over Q’s desk every time he drank one.

They ate in companionable silence, James’ disdain for Q’s drink preferences notwithstanding. “I’d better be off,” James said at length, standing with a small smile and gathering up their debris to chuck in the bin.

“Very well,” said Q. He stood as well, dusting off the plates and putting them back in the drawer by way of resisting the urge to reach out and straighten James’ tie. Their relationship was not really a secret to their coworkers, but Q was keen on keeping things professional while at work. “Do try to stay out of trouble. I’ll see you this evening?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” said James, and fixed him with that heavy gaze that never failed to make Q’s heart stutter in his chest. James tipped his head. “Q.”

“007.” Q stood by his desk, watching James go. The doors slid shut behind the agent, and Q let out a soft sigh, his eyes falling on the 12-month calendar hung on the wall by some intrepid minion. The theme of the calendar was Roman myths, and it was still open to January, the last month anyone had bothered to touch it; the image above the dates depicted the source of the month’s name, the two-headed god Janus, done in an art deco style that Q only sort of liked.

Q found himself staring, arrested by a sudden, unasked-for thought. He wondered if he’d been looking in the wrong direction for James’ still-unexplained distraction: his mind not on Q’s past, but on his future.

He bit his lip and turned away, trying to shake the thought off. He was being ridiculous, and what was more, he had better things to do than muse on puerile, overly-romantic notions that fit both him and James but poorly.

After ten minutes, he got up and went to the calendar, and flipped it to the proper month with a small scowl. “Bloody thing,” he muttered, and went back to coding his program.

* * * * *

The car came at precisely 11:30 and navigated through traffic so neatly that Neal elbowed Peter and asked, "Why don't FBI cars have traffic privileges like this one?"

Peter just rolled his eyes. If Neal hadn't figured it out by now, Peter certainly couldn't explain.

The meeting with Agent Malhotra was both quick and painless; he and Q alone, among all the government agents that they had met so far on this trip, appeared to take the FBI at their word when they said that Neal wasn't a threat, and it was refreshing. The burgers and pub fries that Malhotra had had brought in were maybe a little too heavy after the scones only a little while before, but they were tasty, and Peter watched a little fondly as Neal wolfed his down in record time.

Soon, though, they were back in MI5's car, going to the Tate Britain; Malhotra was coming along, but he'd driven separately. Peter wished there had been a graceful way to suggest Diana ride with Malhotra and Agent Pfotenhauer—not because he didn’t want her around, exactly, but because Peter was more than ready to have some alone time with Neal, to quiz him about Q.

He wondered what Elizabeth was doing right now. He was pretty sure she had a meeting at two, but that was some time from now, and she'd said something about getting lunch and maybe doing some tourist-type things before then. Hopefully she'd get to go to Covent Gardens, or shop, or something fun.

The cars dropped them off in front of Tate Britain and its majestic Neoclassical architecture, and Peter watched Neal take a moment to look up, shading his eyes against the sun. Neal smiled, suddenly, and Peter looked too: white stone stairs, Corinthian columns, Neptune and his trident at the peak—the same as the picture, and quite frankly, breathtaking.

Peter touched Neal on the elbow, and he came back to himself, redirecting his smile squarely at Peter before they followed Jack, Diana, and Malhotra into the museum.

A security guard—head of security, Peter guessed instantly—intercepted them once they were in the foyer, and Neal submitted to a cursory pat-down while Peter fumed in the corner. He didn't blame them, he supposed, but Neal didn't exactly need a gun or lock-picks or anything to steal a painting.

Not that Peter was going to tell them that.

The security head (one Declan Hanson, according to his nametag) brought Peter and the others to a conference room, where two other security guards stood in front of transport boxes lined up on one wall.

There were seven paintings there; Peter recognized them from the files, and would have recognized them anyway. He spotted two Sargents, two Turners, a Millais, a Rossetti, and possibly Hughes? Another Pre-Raphaelite, he was sure of that much.

It took Neal all of five minutes to decide conclusively that all seven paintings were forgeries. Peter watched Neal grow more and more smug as he looked at them, and when he leaned over and found something on the painting that he seemed to expect to be there, he looked triumphant for a moment before returning to a poker face. He ambled over to Peter a moment later, hands in his pockets.

“Well?” Peter asked.

“They’re fakes,” Neal said. “All of them.”

“That was fast,” Peter observed, and gave him the eyebrow. “You wanna tell me how you know?”

“That depends,” Neal said, and all but batted his eyelashes. “Smug” fit him like a well-tailored suit; luckily, Peter had practice at being immune to his particular brand of charm.

“You’re hedging,” Peter said, scowling. “Neal.”

“If you think I’m going to go any further than that without some kind of immunity deal, after France, you deserve to have your badge taken away,” Neal retorted with some heat.

Agent Malhotra dropped his briefcase onto the conference table with a _thump_ that caused everyone to turn and look at him. "I thought this might happen," he said mildly, and pulled out a manila folder with a half-inch or so of papers inside. "You can take your time to read these now, but essentially it's an acknowledgment that any information you give us in relation to these specific seven paintings can only be used to prosecute for the theft or exchange of the paintings, not for the creation of the paintings."

Neal took the folder and skimmed over the first couple pages before handing it off to Peter; the bulk of the document seemed to be descriptions, photographs, and provenance of the seven paintings in question. He wasn't a lawyer, but it looked pretty good, and he gave a curt nod.

Diana plucked it out of his hands and glared at both of them—oh, right, she actually _had_ been to law school—and sat down for a closer reading. "Okay," she said, about five minutes (in which Neal had largely stood with his hands behind his back and ignored Peter) later. "This looks good. Sign it, and then do your thing."

Neal gave a flourishing rendition of his signature; Peter and Jack signed as witnesses, and Agent Malhotra last, as a representative of the Crown.

“Right,” said Neal, as everyone looked at him expectantly. He gestured at Sargent’s _Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose_ ; _Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth_ , also by Sargent; Turner’s _The Golden Bough_ ; and Millais’ _Ophelia_. “I painted those about… five, five and a half years ago,” he said, a faint twist of a smile appearing at the way the curator immediately choked. “A man who owned several vineyards outside Sicily basically commissioned me to paint him some replicas for him. Name of Tolomeo Angelo. I didn’t ask what they were for and he didn’t tell me, he just wanted as close to the originals as possible. He paid me in cash. I enjoyed the work and he paid well.” Neal shrugged.

“I don’t believe you,” said the curator, whose name was Renzo Arcuri. He was a smaller man, possibly of Sicilian descent himself, Peter thought, with dark eyes and heavily tanned skin, and he was glaring accusingly at Neal, arms crossed over his chest. “You only want to take credit. Typical criminal ego.”

“I have had it up to here with the ungrateful attitudes—” Peter began, but Neal just grinned and raised his hand.

“I’ll prove it to you,” Neal said. “I sign all my paintings. I’m vain; most creators are, when it comes to their work. I’ll show you.”

"To be honest, Mr. Caffrey, we know that, and the FBI was polite enough to send us several different iterations of your signature to aid us in our initial search," Agent Malhotra said. "Even I couldn't find it."

Peter's lips twisted in a smug smile— _the FBI's Art Crimes division is better than MI5's_ —and he saw Diana have to suppress a grin. "Yes, but I actually know where I put the signature," said Neal.

Neal knelt in front of the largest painting, _Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth_ , and leaned in to peer at a dark fold of fabric depicted in one of the corners. He stopped short, though, and bent in to look a little more closely. "Does anyone have a magnifying glass?" he said, and Arcuri handed him one, standing over his shoulder.

Neal took it and looked a little more carefully. He reached out to touch the painting, and only Arcuri's hand on his arm stopped him.

"What are you doing?" Arcuri said. "That is possibly a priceless work of art, and even if not, it is evidence."

"It's a forgery," Neal said, "and as evidence it's useless unless I can prove it's a forgery. Which I can." He removed Arcuri's hand from his arm, pushed the man gently out of his way, and, using a pen-knife he'd gotten from somewhere—probably from the curator's pocket, although Peter hadn't seen him do it—he scraped carefully at the paint, as painstaking as a surgeon making an incision.

Then he pulled his hand back. There, small but unmistakable, was a tiny, delicate “NC.” It melted in with all the other details, and if you hadn’t been looking for it, you might well have mistaken it for just another artful swirl of paint. Peter leaned over to look at it and recognized it immediately. Compared against the samples the FBI had sent over, though, he knew no one would have any trouble identifying it for what it really was.

“Well, that’s four of them,” said Peter, inexplicably proud of Neal. He wasn't even sure why, as that would mean he was apparently proud of Neal's ability to forge paintings, which didn't make sense. “Let’s get this man Angelo under investigation, he’s definitely a suspect. Now what about the other three?”

“Yeah, you might have some trouble with him, since last I checked, he was dead of congestive heart failure,” Neal said. “I mean, not that I was exactly following up with him, but.”

Peter sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ll follow up,” he said. “The other paintings, Neal?”

But Arcuri was already shaking his head. “This time I must agree with Mr. Caffrey’s assessment,” he said grudgingly. “The three other paintings that Mr. Caffrey did not paint were the ones I initially identified as having been switched out. The CCTV footage is inconclusive, however, and we still have no idea how they got in. The security system was not even set off.”

"Well," Neal said, "not that I'm an expert or anything, but I might be able to look at the footage—and the rooms, for that matter, and at least point you in the right direction."

"Not an expert, my ass," Peter said under his breath. Neal cheerfully ignored him.

"Speaking of that," Agent Malhotra said, "do you, in your not-an-expert opinion—" He accompanied the phrase with a sardonic eyebrow. "—have any useful information regarding who might have painted these other three?"

Neal _hmm_ ed and stepped forward again, tipping the paintings to look at the back, running a finger along the edge of the frame. "You know, there are only about five people I know of who could do work this good but no better," he said.

"Five?" Agent Malhotra said. "We'd only identified three, but please, by all means, name any names you'd like."

Neal gave the MI5 agent a measured look. "How about you tell me about when you think this painting was done, and I tell you who was working at that time?"

“Certainly,” said Agent Malhotra, seemingly unfazed. “Our technicians dated it to roughly two years ago.”

Neal looked back down at the painting, brow furrowed in thought. “Taylor Stroud, Sebastien Courbet, Julia Dias Cardoso, and Patrick Ealey,” he said at length. “This looks most like Cardoso’s work, to me, but last I heard she wasn’t in the business anymore and had settled down with a family. Courbet would be my next guess, but any of them have the right skill-level.”

“Good, that’s good,” said Peter. He pulled out his smart-phone out—his own, not the one Q had given him for communication while in the UK—and started to type up an email to Jones back state-side. If Neal was naming names, which he so rarely did, then Peter would use all the resources at his disposal. “I’ll have Jones pull our files on those names and we can compare notes.”

Neal turned back to the paintings, and Malhotra asked Peter if he'd heard of the artists Neal named. "Just Stroud," Peter said, and Malhotra nodded. "If I hear anything from Jones, I'll forward it on to you, and hopefully we can meet later today or early tomorrow to discuss it."

"Yes, of course," Malhotra said.

Peter heard a beeping sound, but it wasn't his phone; it was Neal's, apparently, and he stepped aside to fiddle with it.

"I'd suspected Stroud," Malhotra said, "but Courbet and Cardoso—I've heard the names, but I've never had any more concrete information on them other than that they existed. Hopefully with the names as well as the era of paintings here we'll be able to pull more information—that is," he said with a cough, "in conjunction with this case only."

"Do you need any more time with the paintings?" Arcuri asked Neal, who was shooting Malhotra a dirty look.

Neal shook his head as he turned to the curator. "The signatures should be there, there, and there," he said, pointing to the other three paintings he'd done. "You're welcome to remove the paint from the signatures on those yourself." Arcuri looked relieved, and Neal handed him the pen-knife he'd used. It was Arcuri's, apparently, by the look on the man's face. "Thanks, by the way. On to the security footage?"

Agent Malhotra nodded, and Arcuri and Hanson led them out of the room.

When they were back in the car, Peter said, "Oh, who was it who texted you earlier?" as nonchalantly as he could.

"Just Q," Neal said.

"Anything new?"

"Nothing interesting," Neal said, with a shake of his head that meant, _I'll tell you later._

Interesting.

* * * * *

After a day spent navigating London and negotiating with her business contacts, Elizabeth hadn't planned on dinner anywhere other than the hotel room, and when Peter told her that he and she would be accompanying Neal to visit Q for some kind of testing on Neal’s new nanotracker, her initial thought was, "No, thanks." But then Neal came up behind Peter and winked at her, and she got it.

(She wasn't entirely sure that Peter got it, but he would soon enough.)

The car that Q had sent came right on time, which was probably some kind of miracle judging from the traffic she’d seen today, and Elizabeth leaned her head against Peter's shoulder as it drove through town. He'd given her a gloss of what had gone over at the museum: that four of the paintings were Neal's, allegedly sold to a private collector, and three weren't; that they'd looked over the security footage and had seen nothing; and that they'd looked over the specific galleries where the paintings had been and still found nothing. She was a little sad she'd missed Neal in his element, but only a little. They'd gotten back to the hotel room somewhat after four, while she was still working her way back on the Tube. Jack had apparently tried to invite himself along to the "testing session," but Peter and Diana had talked him out of it, especially once Diana had told him about the invitation they'd both received for dinner with Agent Moneypenny.

(Elizabeth couldn’t help but send a silent thank-you to Diana, who was hopefully currently enjoying herself at dinner with Eve and Jack. Elizabeth was almost 100% certain that Diana had no idea of how Elizabeth and Peter really felt about Neal, or how much Peter wanted down time with just the two of them, but she did know that Peter had quietly informed Diana that Neal wanted some time to play catch-up with his old and unlooked-for friend.)

The car stopped at a light, and Peter set his hand over Elizabeth's and squeezed lightly. She turned her hand over and squeezed back.

Drama or no, there were worse places to be than in London with the man she loved.

It was a short drive, by Elizabeth’s judgment. London was a city that sprawled, having swallowed up smaller hamlets and towns as it grew larger and larger, and Elizabeth could see the echoes of that previous life here and there, in tiny church buildings sat neatly on corners, still surrounded by their own yards, and short pointless alleys that may have once led somewhere but now only dead-ended into buildings and parking lots. They finally arrived at a thoroughly nondescript flat of apartments, the clone of every other squat, uninteresting brown brick building in its neighborhood. The driver left them standing at the curb, and the three of them exchanged a glance.

“So this should be interesting,” Elizabeth observed. She wished she had some metric for how she was supposed to act around Q and his—Bond had to be Q’s boyfriend, she was sure of it. If ‘boyfriend’ was the right word for someone like James Bond.

They didn’t know what to expect as far as dinner attire, either, since Q hadn’t said, but that morning Bond had worn a suit that Elizabeth was sure cost $5000 if it cost a penny, so they erred on the side of slightly too formal. 

Elizabeth was in a dark-red silk-blend sheath dress; the wrinkles from the car ride fell out easily, and she smoothed her hands down the skirt as she went to stand in front of Peter on the sidewalk and put him back together. How his jacket—medium gray with fine pinstripes—and tie—a rich summer blue—got so askew after only a short time always managed to confound her.

Neal, in one of his best Devores, was faring better, but she still took a step over to straighten his collar minutely, feeling his eyes on her as she tugged at the expensive fabric. “There,” she said, patting him on his lapel. “All better.”

“Thanks, El,” said Neal with a small smile. Off to one side, Peter chuckled, well-used to Elizabeth giving him the once-over after over a decade of marriage. Of course, none of that put Elizabeth above watching Neal’s backside as he took a step forward and pressed a button to call up to Q’s apartment. She wasn’t the only one watching, either.

"Neal, that had better be you," came Q's voice through the speaker, a little tinnily.

"Did you invite any other charming artists to dinner tonight?" Neal drawled, and Elizabeth felt Peter chuckle against her side.

"Oh, yes, ever so many. I don't know if we'll be able to fit you at the table," Q said, and then a buzzer sounded.

Neal laughed and pulled the door open, holding it for Peter and Elizabeth. He led them up the stairs to the third floor, and then over to apartment 302, where the door opened before he could knock.

"Hello," Bond said, directing a pair of shocking blue eyes at each of them in turn and giving Elizabeth the distinct feeling that he knew _all_ of her secrets, down to the time she stole a cigarette from her best friend Cassie Henderson’s mother and smoked it behind the school. He was wearing jeans and a light sweater, and for such a mundane outfit it wore on him like Gucci or Prada, accenting the bunch of muscles in his arms and the broad, dangerous heft of him.

And then his lips curved into a slow smile, all invitation, and _wow_ , was that man attractive. She knew at least one thing that Q saw in him.

Peter wasn't unaffected, either; she felt him shiver, very lightly, when Bond smiled, and he'd been a little wooden before. She couldn't see Neal's face, but one of his hands twitched.

“What are you doing out there, inspecting them for State secrets? Invite them in, already!” Q’s voice carried down the hall from behind Bond, and the agent’s intensity slipped a little, the smile becoming easier and less—less full of sex. He stepped aside, gesturing them in, and one by one they entered.

It was a reasonably nice apartment—wooden floors, big windows, a few pretty if uninteresting paintings and photographs hung on the walls—but something about it rang falsely to Elizabeth, and she slowed as she entered, glancing around with a small frown on her face. Q appeared within moments, emerging from what looked to be the kitchen, barefoot and dressed in tan slacks and a cream button-down with a skinny green tie, the sleeves pushed up his arms. “There you are,” he said; his smile was for all of them, but his eyes were on Neal. “Good job on not getting arrested since I saw you this morning.”

“Well, they tried, but I avoided it,” Neal said. His grin was huge. “I didn’t want to keep you waiting.”

“Oh, never fear, I wouldn’t have waited,” Q remarked. “I would have wined and dined your friends and laughed about it, I promise.” Bond went over to him as he spoke, and Q turned his face up automatically; Elizabeth saw the way Bond’s hand rested on Q’s hip, just for a moment, as he bent down and kissed Q’s mouth.

“I’ll get the wine,” Bond murmured, and vanished into the kitchen, leaving Q standing there looking a bit dazed.

"Well, so, if you hadn't already guessed," Q said a moment later.

"Nope, got that one," Peter said cheerfully, and Elizabeth elbowed him even as she nodded. He didn't have to sound so _gleeful_ about it.

"How long now?" Neal asked.

"Um. A few months?" Q said.

Bond returned with a bottle of wine, and he showed it to Neal, who nodded in approval. "And how long have the three of you been together?" Bond asked as he headed back to the kitchen.

Elizabeth froze; Peter took an actual step backward, and Neal blanched.

"Oh, God," Q said. "Seriously—ignore him, he's just—I don't even know—James, why do you have to ruin _everything_." The last wasn't even a question.

Neal turned to look at Elizabeth and Peter, eyes wide, and they both shook their heads, Peter’s movement jostling Elizabeth a little. “We’re not together,” Neal said. “I’d tell you, obviously, but we aren’t.”

"Oh," Q said. "Well, whatever it was James thought he saw, I didn’t, so it's probably not obvious."

 _Probably_. Q was unsurprisingly terrible at being reassuring, but Elizabeth smiled at him anyway. Q smiled back at her (somewhat sheepishly, she thought; it was endearing) and led them into the kitchen, Neal following in his wake, with Peter and Elizabeth bringing up the rear. The kitchen looked a little more lived-in than the living room did, but still felt weirdly sterile to Elizabeth, like no one was here very often.

"No, alas, I'm living the life of a single man, free as a bird at the moment. El keeps Peter all to herself," Neal said, clearly moving the subject into a more joking arena as he shrugged out of his suit coat. Q took it from him before coming over to Elizabeth and Peter to relieve them of their coats as well, before vanishing back into the living room, his arms full of outerwear.

“Ah, I see,” Bond said, in a tone that made it obvious that he did not, or that he suspected there was more that he wasn’t hearing. He arranged a set of Riedel stemware on the countertop, the glasses ringing faintly as they bumped each other, before turning and gazing at their guests, a faint smile hovering around his lips. “None of you have any allergies?”

"Terrible wine, airplane cuisine, and poorly-forged art," Neal said immediately, and Peter cuffed him lightly on the back of the head.

"No allergies," Elizabeth said to Bond, who nodded and poured out a glass and held it out to her.

"None for me, yet," Peter said, "although I'll take a taste of that, El." She took a sip before handing the glass over to him. "Oh, that's good."

"Glad you approve," Bond said, although the hint of irony in his tone said that he'd pegged Peter as having the least-sophisticated palate of the three. Well, he wasn't wrong. The wine was good, though, rich and fruity without being too tannic, and Elizabeth savored another sip.

"Shall we sit?" Q said. "The food's already here; I've left it in the oven, but we should enjoy the wine, first."

They nodded, and when Bond had finished passing out the glasses of wine, the others followed him into the living room.

Elizabeth wasn't a trained investigator, but Bond and Q's slight unease with the furniture—and its mint-in-box feel—was, she felt, rather obvious. Maybe it was a new apartment. As in, just that afternoon-new.

"I understand you're an event planner, Mrs. Burke?" Bond said.

"Oh, call me El," she said, and smiled, realizing that she had the only socially-acceptable job in the room. Or at least, the only job that didn’t require jumping through hoops to achieve ridiculous levels of security clearance and/or require invoking the Fifth Amendment.

“El,” Bond repeated, and smiled back. Q curled up against him on the loveseat, apparently not bothering much with propriety now that the cat was out of the bag, and Bond draped an arm across the back of the couch behind Q’s shoulders.

“Yes, I plan events. A lot of catering, that kind of thing. New York’s a good market for it.” Elizabeth followed Peter to the couch, and taking a page from Q’s book, she settled next to her husband, leaning into him as Peter’s arm went automatically around her.

She looked over at Neal just in time to see him freeze, his gaze flickering from Q and Bond on the loveseat down to Elizabeth and Peter, and yes, after Bond’s question, it was a little bit awkward for him to share a couch with them, but where else would he sit? So she patted the cushion next to her, and he sat gingerly, leaning up against the armrest and relaxing ever-so-slightly.

Well, it was the best she could do. She turned her attention back to the conversation. "And the rest of you all have jobs covered under 'I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you,' so do you have any favorite restaurants in town?" she said.

Neal huffed a quiet laugh, and Bond said, "I do, in fact."

Their discussion of local restaurants led to a meal that was, indeed, from one of those restaurants: a pasta dish with farfalle, tomatoes, basil pesto, pine nuts, spinach and mushrooms; roasted chicken with garlic, shallots, and rosemary, and red potatoes; and a dish of sauteed asparagus with lentils, peppers, mushrooms, green beans, and goat cheese, seasoned with garlic, olive oil, and white wine. Elizabeth thought she tasted chili paste in there as well, for spice.

It was _delicious._ Elizabeth hadn’t realized how hungry she was until everything was in front of her, the smells filling the small kitchen, and judging from the way Neal and Peter dug into their plates, the men were just as ravenous as she was. Q seemed happy to play host, hopping up repeatedly to refill their waters or fetch another bottle of wine—they finished off the first one before dinner, despite Peter mainly abstaining, and opened a fresh one as they sat down to eat. He started to get up again as Elizabeth rose, but she shook her head. “It’s fine, I think I can manage to find more butter myself,” she said with a grin.

“It’s—” Q trailed off as Elizabeth opened the fridge door, to find herself peering into a completely empty space. Or nearly empty; there was, in fact, a stick of butter sitting on a tray, but aside from what looked to be a long-abandoned bottle of cider, the fridge was devoid of contents. “In the fridge,” Q finished lamely.

“Along with the ghost of New Years past,” Elizabeth observed, turning and raising an eyebrow at Q. “If I ask why your refrigerator is empty, are you going to have to drug me and leave me in a ditch somewhere?” Neal started laughing, choking a little on a bite of chicken, and he had to sit and cough for a moment to catch his breath while Peter frowned at the whole table.

To her surprise, Bond’s face had creased into a huge grin. “Don’t complain too much,” he said, “or Q might see if there’s still ink packets lying around somewhere.”

“James!” Q huffed impatiently, and Elizabeth exchanged a baffled look with Peter. “You wouldn’t have been covered with anti-theft ink if you hadn’t insisted on trying to break into my flat,” he said, prim.

“Okay, what,” began Peter, as Bond laughed into his glass of wine.

“This isn’t actually my flat,” Q said, and Elizabeth thought she heard someone get kicked under the table as Bond jumped slightly. "The only reason we aren't there is for security," he added hastily. "It's just—a few months ago there was—"

"Is this about David and Janessa?" Neal asked, and Q nodded, his shoulders dropping fractionally as his face smoothed out into something more relieved.

"To explain," Q said, turning toward Elizabeth and Peter as Elizabeth returned to the table with the butter, "in the least-classified manner that I can, I have—had—a pair of evil exes. They escaped from jail, started stalking me, broke into a couple of my flats—uh, decoy flats, that is, like this one. Caused a lot of harm, et cetera. They're gone now—"

"—because I shot them," Bond said, interrupting, a dark look on his face.

"In any case," Q said, "they're gone, but, well, once bitten, twice shy. I can't block Neal's tracker, so anyone following him would know the location of my flat."

Elizabeth hadn't been offended, merely curious, but she found herself nodding anyway, mostly in sympathy for the poor young man. Bond was practically bristling with protectiveness, and she didn't blame him one bit. Under the table she felt Peter's hand on her knee, and she dropped her own hand to rest on his.

“Anyway.” Q took a deep breath, turning to gaze at Bond. “This was one of my decoy flats, like I said. I took certain precautions to—discourage interlopers, and, ah…” He grinned at Bond, some private joke. “The anti-theft ink was one of them.”

“So nice to be the one with the normal relationship in this room,” Peter remarked, and Neal laughed.

“Peter, you and El have the normal relationship in basically any room you’re in,” he said. Peter grinned.

“Speaking of relationships.” Q leaned forward, plucking the second bottle of wine from the table to refill his glass. “Do you mind if I ask whatever happened to your Kate?”

Neal sat back in his chair, letting out a long, slow breath. He looked over at Peter—belatedly, Elizabeth realized that the events surrounding Kate’s death might well still be classified—but Peter nodded. “You don’t have to answer, you know,” Q said mildly. “Water under the bridge, and all that.”

“No, it’s fine,” said Neal. Even Elizabeth wasn’t sure how true that was, but Neal looked like he meant it, like he was trying to find a real answer instead of a convenient, believable one. “She died. It wasn’t an accident; a plane exploded, and I was supposed to be on it with her.”

Q’s face clouded. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Neal…”

“It’s not that different from what happened to you, is it?” Neal looked at Q, and the pensive note in his voice made Elizabeth’s heart go out to him. “I thought I knew her, but I was wrong. I still don’t really know what was going on with her when she died—we think she was being manipulated by someone—but there’s an equally good chance she was playing both ends against the middle and it ended up going sour.” He shook his head. “Anyway. I’m in a much better place now.”

In an uncharacteristic move, Peter leaned over and laid a hand on Neal’s arm, just the barest touch. Neal glanced at him, eyes wide and ever so slightly glassy, and Elizabeth had to reach for her glass of water to stifle her own urge to do _something_.

It wasn't that Peter was averse to physical demonstrations of affection; _quite the opposite, really,_ Elizabeth thought, remembering mornings, early on, when they were both late to work because they couldn't keep their hands off of each other. Even now, she thought half the reason they had Satchmo was so Peter could pet him when Elizabeth wasn't around. But she and Peter had both become entirely too aware of themselves and their impulses around Neal, as of late, and Peter especially had to watch himself—because of his job, because of Neal’s history, because they still couldn’t be 100% _sure_.

But then Neal smiled at Peter, small but real, not a mask, and the tightness in Elizabeth’s chest eased as Peter smiled back.

“Good,” said Q. He slid his hand along the table, towards Bond, and Bond took it, gathering Q’s fine-boned hand in his heavier one, rubbing his thumb across the back of Q’s knuckles. Elizabeth smiled and had to resist the urge to reach out and take Peter’s other hand, but a second later he did it for her, taking her hand under the table and squeezing. “Right,” said Q, “I think that’s enough discussion of our sordid pasts for one evening.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Peter, and took his hand from Neal’s arm to reach for his (still mostly-full) glass of wine. “Not that we really need to discuss work, but was there any truth to you needing to mess with Neal’s nanotracker?”

Q grinned, rising from the table to start to gather their plates. “Yes and no,” he said. “I actually started a sync as soon as Neal buzzed at the front door, but all it requires is prolonged proximity. It might even be done by now. The computer’s in the bedroom.”

“Sync?” repeated Elizabeth. “Like an iPhone.”

“Yes, although my programming is significantly less obnoxious to work with,” Q observed, settling the dishes in the sink. “The mechanism is really quite elegant—”

“I maintain that the fact you give Neal an exotic nanotracker and send me on my missions with a _radio_ is a clear indicator of your real feelings,” Bond cut in, faux-wounded pride coloring his deep voice.

“If you showed even a tenth of the care for expensive electronics that Neal shows for, oh, _everything_ —”

"Ah, yes," Elizabeth said lightly, "the tell-tale sounds of Neal taking up more than his fair share of someone's professional attention."

Peter's face went from zero to “guilty” in two seconds flat, but she shook her head and patted his knee.

"Hey," Neal said, sounding approximately as insulted as Bond had sounded hurt before, and Elizabeth stood, walking behind Peter's chair to kiss Neal’s temple. She started to pick up their dishes, but Bond stood quickly and took them from her.

"Guests don't clean up," he said, and she let him go without a protest.

"In unrelated news," Neal said, "Q, I am actually horrified at the quality of the prints that you have in this apartment. I know you don't really live here, but I'd have thought you'd at least have the taste to put up something a little better than . . . these." He said the last word as if it were a curse.

“Just because you don’t appreciate Rothko doesn’t mean he’s not of quality, just that you have no taste,” Q said archly.

“Aaand they’re off,” Peter said under his breath. Elizabeth laughed softly, and went to refill their wine glasses.

They wound up back in the living room again, Elizabeth and Peter and Bond on the couch this time, Q and Neal on the loveseat engaged in an increasingly lively argument on the merits of Post-Modernism. Q had a soft spot for Pollock (and obviously Rothko), while Neal favored Dali, and that was about as much as Elizabeth could play along with before their conversation went way, way over her head.

“Is he always like this?” she asked, directing the question at Bond.

Bond smiled, sipping his wine glass, and nodded. “About a great many things,” he observed, “but especially about art.”

“Neal’s the same way,” Peter murmured. Elizabeth had to agree; Neal and Q had nearly-identical expressions on their faces, bright and open and sweet, and she was willing to bet the cost of her plane ticket that neither of them even realized it.

Peter's pocket buzzed, and he pulled his phone out, the cheap one from MI6, looking at it disgustedly. "Diana," he said. "I don't want to think about work." He hit the ignore button and then sent Diana a text message, putting the phone back in his pocket.

It wasn't more than five minutes later that his phone buzzed again, and he pulled it out of his pocket again with a sigh. He pushed the button to read the text, and then his face drained of all emotion, becoming harder than Elizabeth had seen it in years. "Neal, we've got a problem."

"A problem?" Neal said, and he obviously heard the flintiness to Peter's tone, because he sat up straight and lost the smile.

Bond leaned over and said, "My sort of problem?"

Peter’s eyes flicked up, his face grim. "Diana says the Met will be here any minute now to arrest Neal for a break-in at the National Gallery."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amit Malhotra as played by [Frank Maharajh.](http://i.imgur.com/v6q2kmQ.jpg)
> 
> All of Neal's aliases appear in canon, save for "Noel," which is a hat-tip to a creation in the absolutely fantastic multi-chapter White Collar fic [Exquisite](http://sam-storyteller.dreamwidth.org/169942.html), by Sam Storyteller. If you are a fan of White Collar and want a long, satisfying read, both authors highly recommend that one.
> 
> The paintings Neal examines in the Tate Britain: Sargent's [Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose](http://jssgallery.org/paintings/Carnation_Lily_Lily_Rose.htm); Turner's [The Golden Bough](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/artist-not-known-the-golden-bough-n00371); Sargent's [Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Terry_as_Lady_Macbeth); Millais' [Ophelia](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/millais-ophelia-n01506); Turner's [The Departure of the Fleet](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/artist-not-known-the-departure-of-the-fleet-n00554); Rosetti's [Beata Beatrix](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/artist-not-known-beata-beatrix-n01279); Hughes' [April Love](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/artist-not-known-april-love-n02476). 
> 
> And finally, the [Rothko print](http://i.imgur.com/IHXJC4K.jpg) that Q has on the wall in his decoy flat.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Met's finest come to try to arrest Neal; it takes half a village to stop it happening. Misunderstandings are bound to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update took a few days longer than promised! RL and then Iron Man 3 happened. Thanks for reading, more coming soon!

“What?” Q sat up like a shot, his cheeks pink with wine and shock. “But that’s ridiculous—”

“This is really getting ridiculous,” Neal said at almost the same moment, leaning over and setting his wine glass on the coffee table. “I am never, ever agreeing to help a foreign government again.”

“He’s been here with us the whole time,” Elizabeth put in, her pretty face fierce with indignation. “How can they possibly accuse him of robbing anyone?”

“Get his tracking data,” said Peter. Q was already getting up, leaving his glass of wine on the table by Neal’s as he hurried to the bedroom to retrieve his computer. He all but sprinted there and back again, the urge to immediately pull up the tracking program losing out to the irrational fear that the situation would spiral yet more out of control if he was gone too long from the room.

“Ask your associate how much time we have,” James was saying as Q returned. He leaned forward, pulling open a hidden drawer in the coffee table open and retrieving his Walther PPK; distractedly, Q noted the way Elizabeth’s eyes went wide as James checked the gun’s chamber to see that it was loaded. Q stood at the edge of the couch, computer balanced on one hand as he tried command after command to get the bloody program to restart; it appeared to be frozen, a situation Q was immediately suspicious of.

Peter sent another text to Diana, and James set the gun on the coffee table. Seemingly apropos of nothing, James then said, "Don't worry; the gun is keyed to my palm-print. Only I can shoot it. You're safe."

Q looked up from his stubbornly-frozen program in time to see the lingering wariness on Elizabeth’s face, her eyes on the Walther. Oh. But she nodded, and her husband absently put a hand on her knee as he said, "She's not sure but she, Jack, Eve—is that Agent Moneypenny?" At James' nod, Peter continued. "She, Jack, Eve, and Agent Malhotra are not even five minutes behind them, so we've got lots of backup."

"Good," James said.

Neal looked over at him questioningly as Q tried to re-seat himself on the couch without taking his eyes from his screen. “I can’t seem to—” he started, and then broke off, derailed from frantically running a mental checklist of how this could have happened as the thrice-cursed program finally rebooted itself. He was so distracted that he would have wound up on the floor had James not reached out to help guide his hips down, and Q gave him a brief pat on the arm before returning to his typing. "I can't quite access the tracking device, it still won’t load properly. Something, or someone, has to be stopping me."

“It looks as though you’re being set up,” said James. Q turned his head to see James—who was definitely 007 now and not James at all— leveling a gaze at Neal, who had gone rather pale. “There’s a back entrance to the building. If we leave now, we should get away easily; I’ve a car downstairs.”

“I can force-kill the tracker if I have to,” added Q. He’d been tipsy before, but he felt no trace of drunkenness now; it had been wiped away by a deadly determination.

“I—” Neal hesitated, turning beseechingly to Peter. Now that James had pointed it out to him, Q wondered how he could have missed the obvious connection between Neal and the Burkes, hard to miss even as distracted as he now was.

"There are two MI6 agents and an FBI agent here, with a second FBI agent, a CIA agent, and an MI5 agent on the way. If we can't figure out how to get all of this settled without Neal having to go on the lam," Peter said, "then all of us should be fired."

Q was touched by Peter’s faith in the various governmental agencies involved; he suspected that Burke hadn't dealt with corruption from within quite the way that he and James recently had, but ultimately, it was Burke's call. Neal was his responsibility, professionally if not personally, and he knew more about the people involved than Bond did.

Apparently James felt the same way that Q did, or perhaps stronger. “Whoever hacked the nanotracker is extremely dangerous,” James countered. “Q is one of the best programmers in the world, which means you have a very powerful enemy trying to frame Neal for reasons unknown to you. Do you really want to surrender Neal in a country where you have no jurisdiction to get him out?”

Peter glowered at him, but to his credit, he kept his cool. “And what if Neal runs? Or we run with him?” he said flatly. “It looks bad, it looks guilty, and evading arrest is an offense in itself. How do we know that’s not playing into this person’s hands?”

“We don’t,” said James, his voice perfectly even. “We don’t know much beyond who we think we can trust, and you had better hope we’re not wrong on _that_.”

Peter stood, using every inch of his superior height, and looked down at James before saying, tone also resolutely even, "We are not wrong." Q stole a glance at Neal and Elizabeth, but both of their eyes were on Peter. Q suffered a brief mental derailment of Peter as a white knight, placing himself in harm’s path of those under his protection, and pushed the thought aside.

James nodded once and stood himself. "All right. Was Neal with you this entire afternoon?"

"Well, I did take a shower," Neal said, "but other than that, yes, I've been in the same room as, well, usually Peter and at least one other agent. And then we came here."

James nodded again. Q bit the inside of his mouth, hard enough to draw blood, and returned his full attention to his computer, letting their conversation wash over him as he bent his will to cracking the egg of whatever bastard had dared touch his program. His fingers flew over the keyboard in a blur, the tang of copper bitter on his tongue; he would not suffer this insult again, he would _not_ let anyone else come to harm because of a flaw in his technology—

Something occurred to him, and he opened a different program, one that could send a message to any mobile in MI6’s mobile network. Seconds later, his nanotracker program finally pinged at him, and Q sat up a little straighter, permitting himself to revel in his satisfaction for only a few moments.

"Diana will confirm," Peter was saying. "Malhotra and Jack, most likely. I assume the two of you will speak for this evening. That leaves us with only the time spent in the car, for Neal not being double-covered, unless the driver—?"

"The driver is an MI6 agent; we can contact him as well," James said.

"Already done," Q said, and at James' look, added, "what, I had a moment when I was waiting for something to load and I sent Harry a text asking him to come back over. I'm in now, by the way."

To everyone else, Q no doubt sounded perfectly controlled; his poker face might not be quite as good as a double-oh’s, but it was still bloody good. James knew him better than that, though, and Q pointedly ignored that look James gave him at the hint of strain in his voice. If there was someone who had no room to criticize Q for being too hard on himself, it was James Bond.

Neal exhaled, rubbing the tops of his thighs with his palms. “I’m starting to wonder if all this harassment over crimes I didn’t commit is some kind of karmic payback for all the ones I did,” he said tiredly.

“Allegedly,” El supplied. “Crimes you allegedly committed.” Neal shot her a grateful look across the coffee table, and Peter relaxed a miniscule amount.

“I think I hear them now,” said James a moment later. He turned and stared towards the front door; within seconds, the sirens grew louder, audible to anyone not currently six feet under. James eyed the gun on the table, no doubt wondering whether it would help or hinder their cause for the Metropolitan Police to be greeted by a double-oh agent with a drawn weapon. He reached some kind of compromise in his head, double-checking that the safety was indeed on before sticking the weapon in the waistband of his trousers, at the small of his back.

“I've got the building’s CCTV feed,” said Q, staring at his screen. “They sent over two cars, and four of them are getting out." Peter and Neal crowded behind the loveseat to look, while James stayed where he was, barely in Q’s line of sight, continuing to watch the front door.

The buzzer sounded, and James went immediately over to press the button on the wall. "Who is it?" he demanded, sounding about as friendly as a bear woken early from hibernation.

"Police,” came back the voice, no-nonsense and seemingly unintimidated. “We have reason to believe that an American named Neal Caffrey, alias Nick Halden, alias..." The officer droned on for a moment or two, before ending with, "...is in this flat. He is wanted for questioning on a matter of grave importance."

James looked over at Peter, who nodded. A flicker of annoyance passed over James’ face, and Q could almost smell the stench of James’ disgust at cooperating so easily with authorities who meant them ill, but he pressed the button to allow entrance anyway.

“Get your ID,” he told Q, who was immediately annoyed at not having thought of that sooner himself. Q slid off the couch, going to his bag to retrieve his badge; James got out his own wallet as Peter did the same, and then Q followed James to the door to greet the police. Q hung back a little while James stood in the doorway, practically bristling with mistrust. He stepped into the hallway before the officers even had a chance to greet him.

“I want your names and your badges,” he growled, flashing his own ID at them even as the older one opened his mouth to protest; both men seemed flustered to find an MI6 agent waiting for them at the door, to say nothing of the ‘Commander’ in front of James’ name. Q hid a smirk. James seldom used it, but his military rank did come in handy occasionally.

The older one, the one in plainclothes, took one last glance at James' MI6 ID, and flipped out his own badge, saying, "DI Evan Houghton, Metropolitan Police."

The younger man, in uniform, did the same, fumbling a little and almost dropping it. "PC Zain Sayegh. Where is Mr. Caffrey?"

"I'm right here," Neal said, hands up in the air, some sort of government ID in one of them. He'd long since removed his jacket, and with his wide blue eyes and his slender frame in his neat white shirt and slacks, he cut about as unassuming a figure as it was possible, at least in Q’s opinion.

"You'll have to come with us," DI Houghton said, and stepped forward to look at Neal's ID.

Neal handed it over gingerly, leaving his hands still at shoulder level, and said, "If you don't mind, there are three more agents, one from MI5, who will be here in a few minutes, and then we can get this sorted out."

Sayegh glanced at the DI, clearly his superior; Houghton frowned. Peter chose this moment to appear in the doorway, which was now getting very crowded, his own badge held out. “Neal Caffrey is here under FBI and CIA protection, and has been under my supervision for the entire day,” Peter said. “I’d like to see your warrant, please. In fact, why don’t you two just come inside and sit down for a few minutes.”

Q had to hand it to him; Peter managed both ‘diplomatic’ and ‘authoritative’ without dropping either ball. Houghton looked from Peter to Bond to Neal, and then seemed to deflate slightly. He nodded. “Alright then,” he said, returning his badge to its home in his pocket. Q backed up, Peter and Neal stepped back, and James stepped aside, allowing the two officers entrance into the flat.

The Met officers sat carefully on the long couch; Elizabeth had stood up when the door opened, and now she sat on the loveseat, looking just as innocent and charming as she could. Q (who strongly suspected that Elizabeth was the most devious person in the flat) stood at the end of the sofa, his own ID bag dangling in plain view from his lanyard.

"Glass of water?" he inquired. Since they were apparently going to be civil about this.

The two officers shook their heads. "No, thank you," said DI Houghton. "There are differences between the legal system here and yours at home," Houghton said to Peter. It took Q a moment to recognize as the start of an explanation as to why he didn't have a warrant.

Peter nodded. "I'm aware. I'm also aware that the Met wouldn't have jurisdiction over art crimes; that would pass to MI5 almost immediately, so I assume you were called in due to being in the area?"

Sayegh looked at Houghton again, who sighed. "If Mr. Caffrey would consent to being brought in for questioning, it would eliminate all jurisdictional issues."

"I do not consent," Neal said, calmly and clearly. He always was a quick study, Q thought.

“Then we’re just going to have to wait till Agent Malhotra gets here,” said Peter levelly. “Which should be within minutes.”

“How exactly are you aware of what we came here to speak to Mr. Caffrey about?” asked Sayegh suspiciously.

 _Oh for fuck’s sake._ “Because Agent Burke and Mr. Caffrey were invited to London to advise MI5 on the current break-ins at the Tate,” said Q impatiently. He’d just gone for his computer and sat down next to Elizabeth, but he couldn’t help himself, really. “They spent the afternoon with Agent Malhotra at the Tate Britain. They hardly—” He cut off as his program finally finished updating itself and re-started, flashing a message to get his attention, and he hunched over his laptop, face tight, typing furiously. “Dammit,” he said under his breath.

“What?” James came over, peering over Q’s shoulder at his screen as lines of code scrawled across the screen.

“I’ve got the trackers back online,” said Q, pursing his lips at his laptop. “But the history’s all wrong.”

"Wrong how?" Houghton asked.

Q shook his head. "You don't need to know that right now," he said absently, his attention still on his program. 

He was not about to tell two arresting officers that according to the history on Q’s screen, Neal’s tracker had been dark for several hours; hours during which Neal had been sitting right here in this apartment with them. It was fine now, reading normally again, Neal’s dot overlapping Q’s own, but no matter how many times Q refreshed the program in an attempt to shed its altered history, the dark patch remained. The program was still compromised, he knew. He’d have to fix it. 

_What bollocks_ , Q thought irritably. If someone wanted to frame Neal, they were going to have to work harder than that. 

"What's more important is that in about five minutes there will be no fewer than seven law enforcement agents of two different countries and four different agencies who will swear that Neal Caffrey has not been out of their sight for more than the length of a shower since he arrived in this country," Peter said.

"I don't have the authority to drop my orders," Houghton said.

"Yes, but we are within our rights to delay the process until someone who does can be contacted." Q couldn’t have said how much of that was true to save his life, but Peter looked and sounded so certain that it didn't matter.

Luckily for everyone involved, Agents Pfotenhauer, Berrigan, Moneypenny, and Malhotra arrived en masse in less than five minutes. James would no doubt have happily sat and stared the Met officers into puddles on the sofa—interrogation and intimidation were just two of the many, many techniques he’d perfected over the years, as Q had witnessed repeatedly on James’ missions—but Neal and El were growing visibly uncomfortable. For his own part, Q was utterly enthralled with prying the secrets of the mystery hacker from his nanotracker program, looking up only when the buzzer rang again and James went once more to answer it.

“Come on up,” he told Pfotenhauer through the intercom. “The gang’s all here.” He cast another glance over his shoulder at Peter, and then went to let them in the front door, a faint lip-curl the only hint to his current state of mind.

Q could hardly blame him, of course. Their nice evening had turned into an interdepartmental disaster, and James fucking _hated_ playing politics.

“007,” came Moneypenny’s voice from down the hall. At the title, DI Houghton’s head jerked up like a rabbit that had just scented a predator, eyes wide. “So much for not being on duty, I see.”

"Double . . . oh?" said Houghton weakly. His face had gone very white. Q did not bother to keep from smiling, but he did at least direct it at his computer screen.

"More information you don't need to know," James said as he came back into view, almost cheerful. He patted the too-pale man on the shoulder as he passed him.

An hour of explanation and five phone calls later, the Police Commissioner was still unreachable for some unknown fucking reason, and even Moneypenny’s legendarily even temperament was beginning to fray. Despite his initial fear of coming up against a double-oh, the DI was not backing down, which was pretty impressive considering the size and number of egos currently in the room.

As it turned out, the director of the National Gallery—understandably mindful of the break-ins at the other museums, especially in light of famed international art thief Neal Caffrey’s presence on British soil, and worried that his own would be the next target—had found his worst fears confirmed when several irregularities in security footage led to discovery of yet more paintings replaced with forgeries. As the agent in charge of the investigation, Malhotra had gotten a hysterical phone call from the man demanding that MI5 account for Neal Caffrey’s whereabouts. Malhotra had pulled up Neal’s tracking data in order to do just that, only to discover that Neal’s data was completely off-line.

At this news, the director had pitched a fit, insisting on nothing less than Neal’s arrest. Add in political connections and jurisdictional issues, and by then even Malhotra's solemn swear that Neal had _never_ been an intended suspect in whatever had happened at the Gallery wasn't enough.

To make matters worse, halfway through the discussion, DI Houghton got yet another irate phone call from the curator of the National Gallery, who’d somehow got wind that four of Neal Caffrey’s forgeries were currently sitting pretty at the Tate. Not Neal’s fault, really, but damning in light of the current situation.

It was Jack Pfotenhauer, of all people, who finally ripped the bandage off. “Give me the phone,” he said abruptly, unfolding himself from where he’d been sitting on the arm of the couch and reaching to snatch the phone from a weary DI Houghton. “Mr. Blackwell? This is Jack Pfotenhauer, with the CIA. No, you shut the hell up and listen to me.” A drawl crept into his voice now, something Midwestern, Q thought distractedly.

“This,” said Jack, his voice dripping with venom, “is ridiculous. You are wasting everyone’s time and money, and you are _not_ helping us to locate your missing paintings. Neal Caffrey is neither dangerous nor _magic_ , he’s had two pairs of agent eyes on him _every minute he’s been in your fucking country_ , and yet you want me to believe that he somehow managed to Peter Pan his way into your museum and make off with a painting? Is that what you are telling me.”

There was a pause; everyone in the room was listening, arms crossed, glancing uneasily at each other. Jack’s glower darkened. “Really,” he said. “Because if you insist on the harassment of an American citizen when he’s made a good-faith effort to help your government, I’ll be lodging a formal complaint against you with the American Embassy, and I’ll take the sworn statements of every agent in this room as my witnesses. So we can do that, if you want. Or you can be reasonable, and we can handle this in the morning.”

Jack turned around, his eyes falling on Neal, who was by now curled up on the couch, no doubt wishing he could vanish through the floor. “Well I’m awfully glad to hear that, Mr. Blackwell,” said Jack after another moment, grim satisfaction now in his voice. “I think that sounds just fine. Let me pass you to Agent Malhotra.”

Things settled out nicely from there.

Q was just glad they hadn't had to call in M. He got cranky when inter-agency cooperation required him to interrupt his dinner. Nonetheless, Neal was willing to agree to a consult if the National Gallery did discover a disturbed painting, especially after Q said he was willing to swear an affidavit saying that the GPS monitoring had been compromised. Even Peter looked somewhat mollified at that.

The Met officers left; Agent Malhotra took his leave, after saying somewhat apologetically that there would be a pair of MI5 agents that would be guarding the door to the American contingent’s suite. and Moneypenny stayed just long enough to make sure that Q was all right. "We'll be going home soon," James said, meaning Q's super-secure flat, and she nodded. Q would have been pissier about Moneypenny’s and James’ inexplicable over-protectiveness if it had _actually_ been inexplicable; some day they’d get over his kidnapping and near-death at the hands of his former lovers, but today was not that day.

"We should probably head out," Peter said. "It's been a long day, even without this latest fiasco."

"Thank you for your hospitality, Q, James," Elizabeth said, smiling at them.

"Next time we won't invite the Met’s finest," James said, giving her his best Charming Secret Agent smile in return. Q noted the way Elizabeth’s face flushed, just a little, and she took Peter’s arm, shaking her head slightly.

“Next time hopefully there won’t be any art theft at all involved,” said Q peevishly. He was starting to crash from the long day, and remembered abruptly that he’d only had four hours of sleep the night before. Well, the Americans weren’t much better off, what with their jet-lag, he supposed.

“Yeah, I’m ready to call it a night,” said Jack. He leaned against the wall, watching the Burkes say their good-nights with tired eyes. “Mr. Caffrey, with all due respect, I had no idea you were such a trouble-magnet.”

“You still have no idea,” Diana remarked, and it was a sign of how tired he was that Neal just shook his head.

* * * * *

Harry, the poor MI6 agent relegated to being their driver, had brought a larger car this time, so all five of them could go back to the hotel in one vehicle. Peter was somewhat relieved by this, as he might have had to beat anyone who suggested that he and Neal should ride in separate cars at that point.

Which, considering Bond's rather direct questioning earlier, would probably not be good.

Peter sighed, and Elizabeth looked at him, her face partially illuminated by the passing streetlights. He shook his head gently in the way he usually used to mean _I'll tell you later_ , and she nodded back.

No one in the car was speaking; everyone seemed to be crashing off an adrenaline high, or maybe that was just him. _Damnit, Neal_ , he thought, and felt the usual complex mix of emotions wash over him.

Maybe not _that_ complicated: affection, possibly love; possessiveness, not necessarily linked to the love; admiration, of course. More than a little lust. He'd come to terms with all of that stuff a while ago, made significantly easier by Elizabeth’s ready acceptance of all of it—and her own feelings about Neal, remarkably similar to his.

What wasn’t easy, of course, was how Neal fit into all of it, how he _wanted_ to fit into it. Peter thought—hoped—that Neal did want in, that his and Elizabeth’s desire wasn’t one-way. But he’d thought that he and Elizabeth were being pretty subtle about it; apparently that wasn’t quite as true as he’d like. Bond’s question at the start of the evening about how long they’d all been together made him hope, rather more desperately, that the chemistry between the three of them wasn’t obvious to anyone else.

His eyes drifted to the man in question, who was staring out the window. Peter wondered how many times a man could be threatened with re-incarceration and not revert to form, no matter how hard he was trying to stay on the straight and narrow. He heard a dull grinding noise and realized it was his own teeth, and forced himself to relax and unclench his damn jaw.

They trooped upstairs in virtual silence, no one really making eye-contact with anyone else. Elizabeth leaned against him in the elevator, and Peter automatically put his arm around her. There was, in fact, a pair of black-suited MI5 agents already standing in the hallway, but they merely nodded at Peter and his group as they entered the room.

“What time are we getting up?” Diana asked him, pausing once they got to the common area of their suite. Neal and Jack turned around at the question, everyone looking to Peter as their _de facto_ leader.

"I'd say," he said, "that at the very least Neal and I and anyone going over to the National Gallery should be ready by nine. I'd expect a phone call or a car sent over by then. If whoever's up first can start the coffee pot—there is a coffee pot, right?" He looked behind him at the kitchenette, and yes, there was one.

"Must be because we're all American," Neal said, and Jack nodded.

"But I guarantee that coffee is terrible," Diana said; briefly, Peter recalled her childhood as a diplomat’s daughter, virtually living in hotels. "I know where the scone place is. Someone can come with me to get breakfast tomorrow morning." The ghost of a smile touched Peter’s lips. Few people had his ability to tolerate the tepid swill that passed for coffee at the Bureau headquarters.

"Anyway,” said Peter. “Coffee of some sort in the morning. Then the National Gallery, then probably back to the Tate Britain, unless they've discovered something new."

Diana, Jack and Neal nodded.

"I don't know what's happening after that. We'll regroup at dinner at the very latest."

Another round of nods.

"And now, if you'll all excuse me, I'm going to bed." Peter cast one last glance around the assemblage, and then turned and trudged into his bedroom, Elizabeth trailing in his wake. It was all he could do not to just throw himself face-first onto the bed and pass out.

Elizabeth shut the door quietly behind them, and then made a beeline for her suitcase, digging out a pair of pajamas. Peter eyed the bed and then decided to follow her lead, getting out his pajamas before succumbing to inertia and sitting down heavily on the bed with a groan.

“Wow,” said Elizabeth quietly. She crawled onto the bed next to him, and Peter pulled her against him, burying his face in her soft hair and inhaling deeply. “I have to say, that was the most _unique_ dinner party I’ve been to in awhile,” she murmured, slipping her arm around his waist.

“No kidding,” Peter muttered. “What a disaster.”

“The company was nice, though.” He felt her smile against his collarbone, and he found himself smiling in response; she nearly always had that effect on him.

"Are you including the part where Bond asked how long we've been with Neal?" he said, figuring one of them had to mention it.

Elizabeth groaned. "That's going to make him skittish, isn't it," she said resignedly. Tt wasn't a question. "I know we didn't have any set plans or a time-table as to how we wanted to ask him if maybe he'd be interested, but I hope that didn't screw everything up."

"I don't think it did," he said, thinking over Neal's reactions. "He looked uncomfortable, sure, but he didn't seem mad or disgusted. This is probably wishful thinking, but he didn't seem as thrown off-balance as I would have expected."

"Well, you know him better than I do," Elizabeth said, though at this point Peter would have said she just knew Neal _differently_ than he did. "We'll see. As long as nothing changes on our part, I don't think he'll change, either."

"No," he said. "And we'll deal with this—if we have to—after we get back home."

Elizabeth hummed her agreement against his collarbone, and then Peter indulged in one of his favorite activities for a few minutes, which was kissing his beautiful wife. They were both tired and he didn’t really have anything more ambitious on his mind, but while he would have spared Elizabeth the drama they’d endured so far if he could have, Peter wasn’t sorry to have her here, wasn’t sorry to have her strength and support to drink from. She made everything in his life better just by being near him.

He didn’t notice the phone’s beep immediately, due to his pleasant distraction, but Elizabeth did. She pulled back, eliciting a grunt of protest from Peter, and dug it out of the pocket of his blazer, hung up on the chair; she had to stretch to reach it, and nearly fell off the bed in the process. “It’s Neal,’ she said, raising both eyebrows as she passed it over. Peter returned the eyebrows and flipped open the phone to read the message: _Are you still awake? Can I come in for a few minutes?_

“He must be pretty shaken up,” Elizabeth said softly, peering over his shoulder at the text. “Go on, tell him he can come.”

Peter frowned. “What if Jack or Diana sees?” he asked, and then winced as the line hit him.

El grinned at him, catching his wince. “The two American kids are doing the best that they can, I’m sure, buuut I think they’re both already asleep,” she noted. “Neal’s snuck into plenty of places before, I’m sure he can manage to cross a living room unheard.”

"All right," Peter said, still a little dubious, but he typed in, _We're awake. Come on over,_ and hit 'send.'

There was a very quiet knock on the door a minute or so later, more like a scratch, and if he hadn't been listening for it, Peter might have missed it. He stood, crossed the room quickly, and let Neal in, looking out into the living room to see if anyone was still awake.

He closed the door and turned back to Neal, who was wearing pajama pants, a t-shirt, and an expression that managed to be both exhausted and amused. "No one was out there," Neal said with a faint smile. "And even if they were, I could be coming in here to borrow your cell phone charger or your shaving cream or something."

"True," Peter said. "Do you need anything?"

"Um." Neal's gaze slid to Elizabeth. "Moisturizer?"

Elizabeth laughed, got out of bed, found a tube in her makeup kit, and handed it to him.

Neal took it, and shifted his weight from one foot to another. "Thanks," he said, but didn't turn to leave.

"Something wrong?" Peter asked, and Neal shook his head.

Peter exchanged a glance with Elizabeth, and then sat on the edge of the bed. "Sit," he said, patting the covers. Neal stared for a few moments, as though nobody was even home, and then came over, plunking himself down on the edge of the bed next to Peter. Elizabeth crept down to sit on Neal’s other side, effectively flanking him.

“So,” Neal said after a few moments, the effort obvious, “I feel like I should be flattered that everyone was fighting over me today. Like the prettiest girl at prom.”

“Did you even go to prom?” asked Peter, or started to, but Elizabeth shot him a look that would have destroyed a small town and reached out to take one of Neal’s hands. Neal’s eyes flickered down to her hand, and he smiled, squeezing it lightly.

If Neal realized Peter’s comment was out of line, though, he didn’t react. “I went to junior prom,” Neal said faintly. “There was a lot of drinking.”

 _Of course there was,_ Peter thought but did not say. He’d only seen Neal this worn down a handful of times; none of them were good experiences. “You did good today, Neal,” he said instead, and before he could second-guess himself he reached out and laid a hand on Neal’s arm. Neal lifted his head and looked at him, and the faint smile became more real, less absent, as some of Neal came back from whatever place he’d wandered to. “Really good. You did everything right.”

“Thanks,” Neal said. He licked his lips, and cleared his throat before he added, "You can tell Jones that his lectures on criminal procedure sank in."

 _What_ —oh, Neal’s clear refusal to consent to be questioned. "You can tell him when we get back home," Peter said.

Neal nodded.

"So what was Q like back when you knew him?" Elizabeth asked, and Peter applauded her attempt to move the conversation to more neutral topics.

"Oh, God, _young_ ," Neal said. "He couldn't have been more than twenty."

"And you were so old yourself," she said, grinning.

"Older than _twenty_ ," he said, mock-insulted, and when Elizabeth squeezed his arm, he leaned into her touch briefly. Peter did not miss it.

They continued talking, and the conversation seemed to settle everyone down, normal and rambling and pointless as it was despite them all being in pajamas and sitting on a bed. A good half-hour later, Peter had joined Elizabeth at the head of the bed, while Neal still lay towards the bottom, sitting up half way every time he said something.

"Neal," Elizabeth said, interrupting his monologue about terrible shoddy art forging techniques. He looked at her, tilting his head to one side, and it was obvious that he'd gone past 'tired' to 'loopy' some time ago, even if Peter wouldn't have known from his speech patterns. "Come up here," she said, and, wonder of wonders, he did, scrambling up to lean against the headboard between them.

Elizabeth scooted over to rest her head on his shoulder; there was a brief wooden moment as Neal almost flinched, but then he let out a deep breath, as if he'd been holding it for a very long time.

Peter smiled. He couldn’t help himself; they looked so good together like that, so natural. Neal looked like he belonged there, in Peter’s bed, with Elizabeth leaning against him as easy as Sunday morning, and maybe if Peter was lucky (if he was very, _very_ lucky), they’d get to see Neal here like this more often. “You should make a list,” he murmured.

“Huh?” Neal’s eyes flickered over to him, soft and almost dreamy. He was close to falling asleep, Peter realized.

“Places you want to see while we’re here,” Peter clarified. “Stuff you’d like to do. Since we came all this way.”

“Oh!” Neal smiled, letting his eyes slide shut. “Okay,” he said agreeably, and his voice was thicker now, rough with impending sleep.

“Should go to sleep,” Elizabeth murmured, making no move whatsoever to let Neal up.

“Uh-huh,” Neal agreed. His face was slack now; his lips hardly even moved as he spoke. It was all Peter could do to keep from leaning in and kissing his mouth, the soft bow of his lips. Peter sighed, and glanced at Elizabeth, raising an eyebrow questioningly.

She shook her head, and he leaned back against the headboard, close enough that he could feel the heat of Neal's body in a warm line against his.

Peter didn't fall asleep, but he did close his eyes, listening to Neal's breathing from mere inches away; he heard Elizabeth fall asleep some five or ten minutes later. When he was sure they were both asleep, he crept out of bed, around to the other side, and pulled the blankets gently over his wife and his—his CI. He turned off the overhead light, got back into bed, set his alarm for five in the morning—Neal had to be returned to his room at some point—and turned off the bedside lamp, rolling over so that Neal's side was pressed to his back. He couldn't keep the smile off of his face, even as he felt himself drifting off to sleep.

It wasn’t the time or place for this. But then it never was, really. And Neal had come to _them_.

Maybe this had a chance after all.

* * * * *

Q came awake to twin sensations of someone shaking his shoulders and a horrible crick in his spine.

“Fhhghhgh,” he said articulately, and reached to push his glasses up his nose, only to find that they weren’t there. Moments later a pair of hands slid his frames into place, and Q squinted at James’ face, hovering just a foot away from his own.

“That’s quite enough sleeping in chairs for you for one night,” James said with a faint twist of a smile. He was crouched by Q’s chair, wearing just a t-shirt and pajama pants. “Come on.”

“What time is it,” Q slurred, irritable in his confusion.

“Four am.”

Q blinked, and glanced down at the laptop gone dark in his lap. “Shit,” he said, and let James remove his computer and carefully set it aside. “What…” Q trailed off, struggling out of his chair, cobwebs of deep sleep still strung across his mind, making it hard to think. He couldn’t bloody remember how he’d even wound up in—the reading room, he realized. That’s right, he’d come to the reading room to keep working on his program, so as not to wake James; the couch and the bed were in the same big room, at one end of Q’s flat.

Q’s real flat (the one he and James essentially lived in now, despite Q’s many decoy flats and James’ own dwelling that he hardly used at this point) was improbably huge and very, very secret. The one was a function of the other, Q having used an inheritance to completely re-do the top floor of the apartment building in which he lived, during a week in which the entire tower block had mysteriously developed a vermin infestation, forcing all its residents to temporarily relocate until the “rats” had been driven out. Aside from the reading room in which Q had crashed, there was also a combined kitchen & dining area, an art studio, and a massive bedroom/living area with the expected number of electronics, computers, and assorted paraphernelia.

They’d come home from the fake flat, and Q had gone straight to the reading room to work, he remembered now. James had let him, knowing better than to argue with Q when he was this hell-bent on something, but his exhaustion had caught up with him after a few hours of sitting in his coziest reading chair.

James slid an arm around his waist as Q stood, and Q sagged a little, molding himself to the strong line of James’ body, pressing his face to James’ neck, reveling in his warmth. “Did I wake you?” Q asked after a moment, muffled. He didn’t see how he could have done so, since he was here in the reading room, but James was up for a reason, so.

Unsurprisingly, James shook his head no, and said, "Carly launched herself off of my head, so I woke up, and realized you weren't in here."

"I didn't finish," Q said, aware that it wasn't an excuse. "I can't—I secured Neal’s tracker but I didn’t find who hacked into it. I need to do that."

"First, however, you need a modicum of sleep," James said, and tightened his arm around Q. "And there's a nice bed just over that way." He stepped off, and Q had no choice but to walk with him.

"A modicum of sleep," Q repeated, as they made their way slowly to the bedroom. "It's 4am, you said? I need to be at work at—"

"—a reasonable hour so you don't crash," James finished.

"You're a fine one to talk," Q muttered.

"Obviously I know what I'm talking about," James said, and he herded Q through the bedroom door. Q did not give him much resistance, despite his grumbling. Sleep clung to him with heavy, insistent fingers, weighing down his limbs and wrapping his head round in gauze, like taking lignocaine at the dentist’s.

“How come you’re so much more alert than I am if you just woke up too?” Q asked peevishly. “You don’t sound as if you’ve slept at all.” James gave him no answer, stopping him at the foot of the bed to help peel his clothes off. “James?” Q pressed, muffled through the knit of his jumper as James pulled it over his head. James reached for his belt, and Q swatted his hand. “Answer me,” he said.

Only then did James meet his gaze, studying him for a few moments as though deciding what to say. “I was just dozing,” he said finally. “I knew you were still up, so…”

Q’s eyes widened. Chagrin flooded his sleepy haze, still not quite drowning the curl of warm affection that came with the realization that James slept but poorly without Q in his bed. “You should have come gotten me sooner,” he said, stupidly.

James thought it was stupid too, judging by the eyebrow that earned him. “Would you have come?”

“Probably not,” Q admitted, and James kissed him.

Q unbuckled his own belt, but his fingers fumbled at the zip of his trousers; James' fingers came up and helped him undo the rest of the fastenings. Q gave up and let James push the fabric off his hips and to the floor, and he just stood there as James unbuttoned his shirt (he'd abandoned the tie when he'd grabbed a pullover) and pushed that off his shoulders, as well.

"Pants?" James said, kneeling to get rid of Q's socks.

"I'll strip if you do," Q said, and was rewarded with James standing, crossing his arms, and removing his t-shirt in one lithe movement. Q seriously did not have enough spare brain-cells to remove his own clothing _and_ deal with the lust that suffused him at the sight of James nude, regardless of his actual ability to do anything with the nudity, so he stood like a statue as James stripped out of his pyjama pants and eased off Q's pants himself.

Carly had pronounced herself Queen of the Pillows and was curled up in the exact middle of them, but Q scooped her up and put her at the foot of the bed before he dropped himself onto the mattress. James followed, and Q took just enough time to divest himself of his glasses, dropping them in the little carven nook in the bookcase before crawling into the warmth of James’ arms. Q dragged a sheet up over them both, shivering lightly at the cool cotton against his bare skin, but James moonlighted as a hot water bottle when he wasn’t killing people for fun and profit, and any and all blankets would end up kicked off the bed if Q tried to sleep with them.

To Q’s surprise, James buried his face in Q’s hair as soon as they settled against the pillows, muscled arms squeezing once around Q before settling into something more relaxed. Q bit his lip, the words on his tongue to ask if something was on James’ mind, but in the end he let it go. It had already been a long day, and tomorrow would be even longer.

His last thought, before drifting off again, was how remarkable it was that James would admit to functioning anything less than flawlessly under any circumstances, when only six short months ago you would have been hard-pressed to even get him to acknowledge a broken bone. The thought warmed him more even than the furnace of James’ sturdy frame against his own, and Q held it in his mind like a candle against the dark, permitting himself to revel in it before drifting away.

* * * * *

Neal woke to the sound of a cell phone buzzing, with the fuzzy knowledge—somehow—that it was not his. He heard a grumble, and then, "Five more minutes," in a male voice, which woke Neal up the rest of the way.

Because that was Peter's voice, and presumably Peter's cell.

And definitely Peter's bed.

And the warm, soft body he was wrapped around was Peter's _wife_.

He froze, because this was—wrong. Wonderful, and really something he'd needed last night, but _wrong_ , because Peter and Elizabeth were amazing together and he didn't want to do anything to change that, _ever_. But—and he could be wrong, but he'd thought that someone was spooning him, in the indistinct moment between the alarm sounding and Peter's grumble. Someone a little more angular than Elizabeth, and a little larger than Neal himself, which . . . No, it couldn't have been.

None of this was happening. He had to get out of there, _now_.

Peter didn't move; he wasn't snoring, but he was breathing deeply and evenly, so Neal was reasonably certain he'd have a chance at not waking him up. However, Elizabeth stirred when he tried to get his arm out from under her, and rolled onto her back. "Mmm," she said. "Good morning, Neal."

"Um," he said, very quietly, because even though they were both wearing pajamas and he was sure his morning-breath and bed-head were both legendary, the way she was looking at him, from only a few inches away, still sleepy and open, was, well.

Everything he'd wanted.

Well, almost everything, he thought, and he shivered with the sensory memory—maybe only imagined, conjured by desire—of Peter wrapped around him.

"Sleep well?" Elizabeth said, drawing his attention back to her.

He nodded and she smiled, unguarded and somehow intimate despite the innocuous question. Suddenly—well, no; not suddenly at all: she telegraphed every movement from a mile away, but Neal stiill wasn't expecting her to push up on one elbow and press her lips to his. Except that was exactly what she did. While the kiss barely crossed the line from chaste to not, he was still _kissing Peter's wife_ and this had to stop, now, before it never did, before he opened his mouth and touched his tongue with hers, before he reached back and found Peter and drew him into a three-way embrace, before—

He broke the kiss and said, "I have to—" His gesture was indistinct, encompassing both the bathroom door and the door to the suite.

Elizabeth nodded. "We'll see you in a bit."

The 'we' burned him as he scrambled over her and rushed out of the room with barely a nod in response. An image flashed in his mind of a dog retreating with its tail between its legs, and he was so badly out of sorts that it was all he could do to keep quiet as he fled across the living area, letting himself into his own room with shaking hands. Neal shut the door gingerly behind him, twisting the deadbolt shut and then sinking onto the floor, putting his face in his hands.

A shudder twisted through him, a violent head-to-toe spasm, like a myoclonic jerk in the moment before sleep. Only this was somehow no dream: he’d fallen asleep in Peter and Elizabeth’s bed, an interloper in their lives in every sense, and yet they had let him stay, had welcomed him, even. Neal shoved the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying and failing to banish the lingering warmth of their bodies against his. For only the second time in his adult life, he was thinking seriously about taking a long, cold shower.

He didn’t think there was any chance of getting back to sleep, even with jet-lag tugging at him; it was just past midnight in New York. What he really wanted was to shower, get dressed, and go for a long walk, but there was precious little chance of that, not after the fiasco last night. Well, he could do a shower, at least.

It wasn't a cold shower, though, because he hated cold showers with a passion that knew no bounds, and yet as he stood under the hot spray he couldn't relax, couldn't make his shoulders un-knot. Couldn't make his goddamn traitorous erection go away, and eventually he just leaned against the wall, the tile under his arm cold, and stroked himself until he came, images of Peter and Elizabeth tangled together behind his eyelids.

But the orgasm left him cold. Despair sank its teeth into him in its wake, and he finished his shower as quickly as he could, nails scraping against his scalp in his haste to clean himself. He dried off and dressed almost mechanically, in his sharpest suit, armor against himself, he supposed.

There was nowhere to sit in his hotel room, and he didn't want to stay in there, anyway; the perfectly-made bed reminded him where he _hadn't_ been last night. He found a magazine, one he'd picked up in Paris, and went to sit in the main room until someone woke up.

The “someone” turned out to be Diana, and to Neal’s great relief and surprise, she showed up only a short twenty minutes after Neal retreated to the safety of the common area. She was fully-dressed and showered, too, which had Neal wondering if he’d woken her up when he first abandoned Peter and Elizabeth in a blind panic. “Hey,” she said softly, nodding at him in greeting. “I was wondering if I’d be the only one up this early.”

“Yesterday kinda got to me,” Neal admitted, which happened to be true if moderately incomplete. Diana’s face creased with sympathy. “Any chance I could persuade you to go for a walk? I could stand to get out of here.”

“I’d say your chances are good. We might have to take along a friend, though.” She poked her head out the door, spoke briefly with the MI5 agents, and then ducked back in with a short nod. “Let me just get my coat.”

She came back in a few minutes and said, "The scone place opens at six. If we walk slowly, we can get there about then."

"Or we can take the long route," Neal suggested.

"That works, too."

They did take the long route, circling an extra block or so, without much conversation; even if they’d wanted to talk, the pair of MI5 agents accompanying them discouraged that with their mere presence, hovering a scant three feet behind them. Eventually they arrived at A Piece of Cake, already open even though Neal's phone said it was about five minutes after six. There was a short line of sleepy customers, all wearing expressions like junkies humping for a fix, and Neal and Diana took their time perusing the scones in the vitrine before choosing a half-dozen to take with them, as well as a vat of coffee.

The woman who served them, petite, olive-skinned, and dark-haired, winked at Diana and said, "Back already?" when Diana handed her a credit card.

"Couldn't stay away," Diana said, taking the bag off the counter and handing it to Neal. She signed the receipt and they left. "We probably should go straight back," she said, sounding apologetic. "The coffee will get cold."

Neal sighed. "All right."

He lucked out that Jack was already awake and in the common area before he and Diana got back, so there were no awkward moments alone with El and Peter. He also lucked out that nearly the entire day involved so many other people: the curator and half the security staff at the National Gallery; Agent Malhotra and the staff from Tate Britain again (where he received a temporary GPS tracking watch for, apparently, the sake of redundancy); and then a conference call with the Tate Modern.

It was towards the end of the day, while he, Peter, Diana, and Malhotra were going through the videos and transcripts of interviews with various portions of the Tate Britain staff, when Peter tapped his finger on a list. "What about Finley Mills?" he asked.

"Oh," Malhotra said. "He's still in hospital with the flu or something. We'll get his interview later, when he's not coughing his lungs up. In the meanwhile—" He grabbed something off the printer. "I think this is the list of what we've got so far of all of the forged paintings and artifacts from all three museums. Mr. Caffrey, can you look over the list and tell me if these items—largely yours, by the way—have anything in common?"

Neal took the paper from him, looked at the list, and sighed. There were twenty-eight items on the list, and he couldn't even remember who'd bought a significant number of them. But he knew who would. "I think," he said, slanting a glance at Peter, "that we need to call in Mozzie."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adrienne (Stanton): as played by [Adrienne Armstrong](http://i.imgur.com/VRfAL.jpg). More about her can be found in Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, if you haven’t read that one yet.  
> The “two American kids doing the best they can” is a quote from John (Cougar) Mellencamp’s song “Jack & Diane.” [Lyrics](http://www.metrolyrics.com/jack-and-diane-lyrics-john-mellencamp.html).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone is very good at spotting other people's problems but less talented at dealing with their own, and the culprit of the tampered-with tracker strikes again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slow updating! I am at the very end of my semester and laboring through studying for finals; the updates will come more quickly once the next few days are over. My beloved co-author deserves many cookies for putting up with my screaming and crying about chemistry.

"So, who is this person we're bending over backwards to accommodate, again?"

The question came from Bond, sat on the couch with Jack and Agent Malhotra. Elizabeth looked over in time to catch his facial expression, eyebrow raised in the universal parabolic arch of extreme skepticism. El had to hide her grin behind her hand; she’d seen that exact same expression on Peter and his agents’ faces more times than she could count.

“An associate of mine,” said Neal patiently. “He’s a little wary of law enforcement, but he’s a good guy, and if anyone will be able to help us, it’s him. Goes by Dante Haversham.”

“Right, and I’m John Bonham,” muttered Jack under his breath. Next to El, Peter snorted. From the sound of it, he was having to restrain himself from agreeing.

They were all gathered in another of Q’s “decoy” flats (Elizabeth still found that idea bizarre, but after the story Q had told them the other night, she couldn’t blame him, poor guy); Mozzie had agreed to video-conference with them, but only after Neal had promised that not only would their computer security be top-notch, but also that the unfamiliar agents wouldn’t actually see the screen—hence the three of them sitting on the couch on the other side of the room, looking unimpressed to a man.

(Neal had made the initial call to Mozzie from Diana’s bedroom, with Jack banished to the common area yet again. Peter, Elizabeth, and Diana sat on one bed, while Neal sat on the other, and El couldn’t shake the feeling of watching some kind of metaphorical interpretive dance as Neal made the call. She’d been able to hear Mozzie’s squawk of distress from where she sat a few feet away when Neal had mentioned Q, although he’d referred to Q not as Simon but as “the Ghost.” 

“It’s _okay_ , Mozzie,” Neal had added hastily. “He’s clean now, I promise, and he’s the best.” It had taken another ten minutes of negotiation and wheedling before Mozzie had finally consented to a “meeting” in an hour, providing Neal and Peter took pains to meet Mozzie’s safety requirements.)

The monitor with Mozzie's image was on a sturdy wooden desk, with Neal and Q sitting in front of it in office chairs. El was off to one side, having not been banished from looking at Mozzie's image but not actually part of the official conversation, either. Peter and Diana were standing on the other side of the desk, the latter with one hip propped on the desk and the former alternating between hovering behind Neal's chair and pacing.

"He really is a good guy," El said diplomatically, feeling the need to add her voice to the pro-Mozzie side since she knew that Peter and Diana wouldn't, and Jack, Bond, and Malhotra didn't seem inclined to believe Neal's assessment. 

"Why, thank you, Mrs. Suit," came Mozzie's voice from the computer—a little distorted, but Elizabeth thought that might be on purpose. She’d done her best to follow the discussion of Mozzie’s security requirements, but the conversation had quickly gotten much too technical for her to fully understand. "For the record, you have exquisite taste in cheese. Your taste in husbands is somewhat suspect, but we all have our flaws."

El laughed, as did everyone but Peter, but his grumpiness seemed to have a more than a few cracks of humor.

"Neal," Mozzie said, "give me another minute to test this, and then you can ask me your questions."

"Got it," Neal said, and Q bent his head over the laptop again, the movement of the cursor on his screen reflected in his glasses. Abruptly, he stiffened, and then his fingers flew rapid-fire over the keys; Neal leaned in to look over his shoulder.

"Nerd wars?" Malhotra said to Bond, who chuckled.

"The wars of the future, gentlemen," Q said without even looking up, and now it was Neal's turn to chuckle.

"Okay," Mozzie said a few seconds later. The reluctance in his tone was obvious. "You do live up to your reputation, Q."

"Why, thank you, Mr. Haversham," Q said, and Jack and Bond snorted in unison.

“Okay,” said Neal, still hiding a faint smile. “So. Let me catch you up really quickly.” Elizabeth would have bet her house that Neal had already told Mozzie ninety percent of his current situation back before they’d ever left the States. Of course, legally, he wasn’t supposed to do that, but they had appearances to keep up on the dog-and-pony show they were all caught up in. So Neal told Mozzie nearly everything: about the break-ins at the various museums; about the near-flawless theft of almost fifty priceless items, paintings and artifacts combined; and about the rather disturbing number of forgeries that had turned up in the museum that were apparently created by one Neal Caffrey.

“So what we’re wondering, Mozzie, is if you know, or can find out for us, who has spent the past…” Neal paused, glancing at the collective might of law enforcement lounging impatiently around the room. “The past however many years collecting various pieces of my work,” he said finally, and was rewarded with a smirk and an eye-roll from Peter.

"Can you get me a list of what pieces?" Mozzie said. "I can maybe look around, but I'm not promising anything."

At least, not in earshot of law enforcement, El added mentally.

Neal nodded. "I've got a printout," he said. "I can get it to you through some sort of more-secure channel." He turned his head slightly towards Q, who nodded.

"Okay," Mozzie said. "Anything else?"

"How to Allay Fears of Persecution with Improbable Technology for Dummies?" Bond said.

"That's enough from you, 007," Q said, looking over the monitor. "You can't even bring a radio back in one piece."

"Double-oh seven?" The audio staticked out at the loudest portion of Mozzie's panicked cry. "There's a double-oh agent in the _room_? Neal, Neal, abort! Get out of there before he kills you with, I don't know, a paper clip or a tarantula or your own _tonsils_ —"

"I wouldn't use a paper clip or a tarantula," Bond said mildly. "One's own tonsils, perhaps, but I usually find a gun to be the most efficient."

"Hush, Bond," Q said, over Mozzie's increasingly-high-pitched noises.

"He's okay, M—Mr. Haversham," Neal interjected in his best “placating” voice. "I promise. Q vouches for him."

"I'm sure he does," Mozzie said darkly. "I'm out. If you die, it's on your own head."

The transmission cut abruptly, and the whole room was silent for a moment before Neal shrugged. "Oh well," he said. "I'll send him the list, and that's really what we needed."

“What we really need is someone who isn’t going to have a panic attack at the sight of a black cat crossing their path,” noted Jack.

“Hey, it’s not as if he’s wrong about Mr. Bond, is he?” countered Neal, but his best smile was firmly in place; Elizabeth felt a little twinge at the sight of it. Neal had been “on” all day, at least whenever she’d seen him. It brought back memories of the first few times she’d interacted with him, when he’d been so busy trying to figure out which mask of Neal Caffrey was the one that would keep him safe.

And here she’d been hoping that he’d finally realized that he didn’t need any of his masks, because—at least with her and Peter—he wasn’t in any danger.

"Well, that appears to end our need of the technology," Q said. "It'll take me a moment to disassemble." He started removing wires from where the laptop connected to the monitor and the router, the efficiency of years of practice evident from his movements.

"Is there anything we can do while we're waiting for Mr. Haversham to get us the list?" Neal asked. Peter stood, and everyone else in the room followed suit. Elizabeth smoothed her hands along her skirt and stood up, too, smiling at Q when he glanced in her direction and trying not to think about what he’d used to do once upon a time that had warranted a nickname like “The Ghost.”

"I don't think so," Agent Malhotra said. “So unless you have some reason for wanting to go over the security footage again, I'd say that we don't need any of you on a particular schedule tomorrow. Please do try to be available in case something happens, though.”

Peter and Jack nodded, and Neal and Q exchanged a look probably more suited to children given free run of a candy store. "Excellent," Q said with a gleeful grin. "James, we're calling in sick tomorrow."

"Oh?" Bond said.

"Yes. Agent Malhotra, would you agree that a couple of MI6 agents are sufficient to escort Mr. Caffrey to a couple of art galleries?"

Agent Malhotra blinked; Peter smacked his forehead with his palm, and El just grinned.

* * * * *

If an impartial third party would have told Peter that he had a free day in London with his wife, and then asked him how he wanted to spend that day, he could probably have given that person a list. It might have involved the theater; it might have involved a nice restaurant or two. If he was very lucky, it might have involved dinosaurs.

It probably wouldn't have involved following his CI and an MI6 department head around a couple of small- to mid-sized galleries in the Bankside region, with plans to end at the Tate Modern.

It wasn't that Peter didn't enjoy art; he did, he really did. He just saw a lot of it at his job, and a lot because of Elizabeth and Neal generally, and if he were to spend more time in one of the major museums, it would probably be the National Gallery instead of the Tate Modern. Well, actually, if he had his druthers, he would have bowed out and gone to the Natural History museum with Jack, but even his best impression of Neal's puppy-dog eyes hadn't convinced Elizabeth that she should let him go look at dinosaurs.

(And he _did_ want to be near Neal; he was aware that Neal'd been a little bit freaked out after what had happened that morning, but he thought that El was probably better at handling a freaked-out Neal than he was.)

So there he was, at the Ceri Hand Gallery, looking at an interesting-but-not-his-usual taste picture of a flame fractal, painted by an artist he'd never heard of. It was just the five of them; at Q’s query about security, Malhotra had thrown his hands in the air and said he’d take care of anyone who complained. Neal and Q were looking at a different painting in the series, and El a third; Bond, the fifth member of their party, was standing a couple feet behind them, his hands in his pockets and a cat-who-caught-the-canary look on his face.

Which was odd, considering that unless Peter really missed his mark, Bond wasn’t necessarily a fan of art any more than Peter was. Less, he would have said.

Peter frowned to himself, glancing from Bond to Q and Neal, taking the measure of their body language. Q looked—Q’s face was studiously bland, but the fingers of one hand were tapping out an irregular rhythm against his thigh, and he seemed to be trying very hard not to look at Neal. Neal was studying the painting in front of them, and Peter was sure that while Neal _liked_ fractals, they weren’t his favorite. And Bond was watching Q, which….

Ah.

Peter sidled up to his wife, leaning down to murmur in her ear, “I think we’re about to find out about another of Q’s alter-egos.”

Elizabeth glanced his way, eyebrows going up. “He’s got a whole phonebook of them, huh,” she observed quietly, and Peter grinned.

“Looks that way.” Peter shut up as Neal turned to Q, apparently done with his assessment.

“You know,” said Neal, “I could never do fractals; I like working with my hands too much, and I don’t love them as prints, usually, because it takes all the character out of a work, but I love this.” Q glanced at Neal now, his hand stilling on his leg; his eyes were bright, and a dull flush was spreading up his throat and cheeks. “The use of color is really phenomenal, the way the artist balances the warmth of the reds and the oranges with these murkier blues near the middle. And it’s _so_ precise; they must have incredible control…”

“So you like it,” Q said carefully. “I didn’t think fractals were quite your cup of tea.”

Peter elbowed El gently, and she patted him on the arm.

"Not to paint myself, certainly," Neal said. "I tend to stick to the classics, as you know."

"Allegedly," Elizabeth murmured, but if Neal heard her, he was pointedly oblivious.

"But this . . . " Neal took a step back, narrowed his eyes, stared at the painting for a moment, and said, "It's lovely."

Q turned even redder, but his smile flashed, wide and bright. Bond also smiled, possibly involuntarily; Peter and El could see him, but Neal's back was to Bond. All he could see was Q, and he looked a little bemused at the strength of Q's reaction. "Friend of yours?" Neal asked.

"A little closer than that," Peter said under his breath, and it was El's turn to elbow him. Bond, on the other hand, shot Peter a raised eyebrow. Peter returned the look levelly, and Bond finally gave him an approving nod.

“I’ve been having you on a bit,” Q said after a moment, no less red but significantly less tense. He dropped his eyes, gaze somewhere in the vicinity of his shoes. “Elliot Marsh is, um. Actually me.”

Neal stared. “No,” he said. “Wait, really? Q, you painted this? When did you start painting? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, that would have just fit casually into the conversation, wouldn’t it,” said Q defensively, which was hard to manage considering the smile running out of control across his face. “I’d have sounded like an actual knob, wouldn’t I? ‘Oh by the way, Neal, I’ve taken a page out of your book and have a collection of alter-egos that I go by now, and did I mention I started painting using maths?’” He coughed, eyes flicking up to Neal’s face again. “And anyway, I wanted to hear what you thought before you knew I’d done it.” Neal laughed, and reached out to squeeze Q’s arm, and Q laughed too, and Peter suddenly found himself feeling a bit… superfluous.

He swallowed around his curiously-dry throat; El slipped her hand into his and squeezed, and he squeezed back.

"But—" Neal broke off, and lifted his hand off of Q's arm to take a step forward and peer at the painting, leaning in until his nose was only a few inches from the canvas. "But this is _paint_. That's not ink."

"Correct," Q said. "I've got a machine—a rather complicated one, really, all bits and bobs and mechanisms that get fouled up if I'm not extremely careful—that lays the paint down for me."

"Ohhhhh," Neal breathed. "Tell me more."

Peter had absolutely no reason for the stab of jealousy that flashed through his chest. Absolutely none at all. For one thing, Q's acknowledged—boyfriend, or partner, or whatever you called it when a deadly spy was involved—was standing no more than six feet away. Peter turned his gaze to Bond, for just a moment, who had a rather complicated look on his face, pride and love mixed with a bit of bewilderment and—maybe a little jealousy, too, Peter thought. Interesting.

Well, still. Neal also wasn't actually acting as if he were _attracted_ to Q, although he clearly wanted to discuss art with Q until the metaphorical cows came home.

And even if Neal and Q _were_ attracted to each other, assuming the brooding spy-assassin wasn't around (a bad assumption), Peter had no hold on Neal. They were coworkers. Friends, he would have said. Possibly a little more than friends, but certainly not acknowledged, committed lovers.

Although, God, he wanted that.

Whatever satisfaction Peter had gained from guessing Q’s secret when Neal hadn’t slipped all-too-quickly away as Peter, El, and Bond wandered in the wake of the two chattering artists. The way Q and Neal had told it, the two had only known each other for a few short weeks all of six years ago, but the way they were carrying on, Peter would’ve sooner thought they were long-lost brothers. And okay, maybe it said more about Peter’s entirely-inappropriate attachment to his CI, but—

He wasn’t used to Neal straight-up _ignoring_ him. And the longer they moved through the galleries, the more obvious it became that Neal _was_ ignoring him. Him and El both, which galled Peter more than a little. Q’s utter absorption in their conversation was fairly guileless, from where Peter stood—whenever El or Bond interjected to ask a question, Q responded easily, but soon enough Neal was monopolizing his attention again, asking about some obscure painting technique or inviting his opinion on a display.

At one point, Elizabeth ducked away to powder her nose, and Peter was left standing next to Bond—who was decidedly shorter than he was, a small part of him was pettily happy to note. Not that it made Bond any less deadly, but still. Peter never claimed to be perfect.

Neal and Q had wandered a room ahead, but Peter waited closer to the bathrooms, and Bond remained with him. He thought it was in non-artistic solidarity until Bond leaned over and remarked quietly, "Are you going to do something about the panic attack your boy is trying to pretend he's not having?"

Peter's first, defensive response was _Neal's not having a panic attack,_ but he thought about it and finally registered one achingly-fraught look he'd seen directed at El earlier as, yes, despair overlaid with panic. His second response, also unvoiced, was _He's not my boy_ ; he thought about saying that one, but Bond's all-too-direct blue gaze promised that no nonsense would be tolerated.

He finally settled on, "I'll do what I can," figuring it was vague enough.

"Excellent," Bond said. "I’ll see to Q."

Peter nodded, and Bond walked away, towards Q and Neal, just as El came out of the ladies' room. "Did I miss anything?" she asked, looking between Peter, Bond's retreating form, and Q and Neal up ahead.

Peter hesitated, and she gave him a look he knew very well, that said _spit it out and this will be easier for both of us_ , so he did. "Neal's freaking out, probably about last night, and Bond's convinced I need to do something about it."

Elizabeth looked over at Neal, her brows drawing together. "Oh,” she said. "Well, you should."

Of course.

He still almost missed his chance, when it came. He would have, too, except that he married a woman as smart as she was beautiful, and when Bond interrupted Q and Neal’s conversation with a mild, “Q, a word?” El had the presence of mind to shove Peter in the small of his back to snap him out of his worried fog.

“What?” He glanced at her, and she jerked her head at Neal, standing alone in front of the painting that Q had left him at, his hands in his pockets. Peter tightened his jaw and went to him, struggling to sift through all the detritus in his head to find the right thing to say, but it all flew out of his mind when Neal turned and looked up at him, face like a deer in headlights.

So he did the thing that had served him best during his tenure at the FBI, and followed his gut. “Come on,” he said, and ignoring Neal’s startled protest, he grabbed Neal by the upper arm and steered him down the hall. He’d seen a door down this way earlier, probably just a broom closet or something—there. Peter grabbed the knob and found it unlocked, and yanking the door open, shoved Neal into it and then followed him in after, pulling the door shut behind them.

“Peter,” Neal began, and then abruptly shut up. He was looking at Peter with wide, worried eyes; the fear there bit cruelly at Peter’s heart. He never wanted Neal to look at him like that, _never_.

He took a step halfway back and halfway to the side so he wasn't really blocking Neal from the door, and made sure his hands were out to the sides, fingers splayed. "Neal," he said, tone as gentle as he could make it, "can you tell me what's wrong?"

"Peter, I—" Neal stopped, swallowed; licked his lips, closed his eyes briefly. The closet had a bare bulb overhead, and Peter could see every one of Neal's eyelashes in stark relief against his skin. Neal's eyes opened again, unexpectedly, and met Peter's for a scant moment before moving to a point on the wall behind him. "This morning, while you were asleep, I kissed Elizabeth," he said in a monotone.

Peter blinked. "Oh," he said. "Is that it?" Because it made _sense_ now: Neal thought he didn't know.

Neal gave him a bewildered look, but Peter rushed on. "I wasn't asleep. I didn't see it happen, but I did hear. Besides, from what El told me, she kissed _you_."

"Oh," Neal said, although Peter wasn't sure he was aware that he'd spoken. "But—"

"Look," Peter said, and reached out with one hand, slowly; Neal didn't flinch, although he didn't seem to comprehend. Peter cupped Neal's cheek gently and leaned in, trying to make it as obvious as possible what he was going to do, so Neal would have a chance to protest, a chance to escape.

He did neither, and Peter didn't question it; he just leaned in and kissed Neal, softly, gently, but with every bit of conviction he could muster.

For a few moments, Neal did nothing. And then, to Peter’s great joy, he suddenly had an armful of Neal, Neal pressing against Peter’s chest and kissing him back, Neal’s hand cupping the back of Peter’s skull. Now Peter could feel Neal’s tension all but vibrating through his slender frame, his desperation so tangible that Peter wondered what kind of bricks he’d replaced his brain with this morning that he could possibly have missed it. Peter couldn’t help the arm he slid around Neal’s shoulders, holding him close, giving him something to brace against. Neal’s mouth was warm, tasting of the peppermint he’d taken from the dish at the front desk of the gallery, and oh, it was so good. Better than all his daydreams.

Then Neal pulled back with a soft gasp, staring up at Peter with eyes that were abruptly black, the blues swallowed up by dark. “Peter,” Neal started, and then gave a shaky exhale. “Can we—uh. Not do this in a broom closet?”

“Tell me about it,” said Peter before he could stop himself, and it was exactly the right thing to say, because Neal smiled at him then: weak and a little shaky, but a real smile, not a mask.

"Okay," Neal said, voice as wobbly as his smile. "Okay." He shook himself, and then adjusted his tie, straightened his lapels, and dusted a bit of imaginary lint off of Peter's shoulder. (Although, considering the state of the closet they were in, possibly it wasn't imaginary lint.) He looked up at Peter, and he was mostly Neal Caffrey again, the mask that Peter thought was closest to Neal's actual self. "Shall we rejoin the others?"

"Yeah," Peter said, and added, "Later, you'll come talk to us?"

"I will," Neal said, and Peter believed him.

* * * * *

“Q, a word?”

Q glanced at Neal, and then allowed himself to be led a few steps away from his companion, just distracted enough to take James’ words at face value. “Is everything alright?” he asked.

James’ mouth quirked. “Pretend we’re talking about something work-related for a moment,” he murmured. “You’ve been so busy chatting Neal up that you apparently haven’t noticed the fact that he’s inches from going to pieces.”

“What are you—”

“ _Don’t_ turn your head, keep looking at me, that’s it.” James’ voice was firm, his gaze rock-steady.

“Ah.” Q kept his eyes on James until a few more moments had passed, but he couldn’t stop the chagrin trickling down the back of his spine, like ice water from a melt. “Pretty shit friend I’m turning out to be,” he noted, and James’ smile warmed two degrees.

“Mmm. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Neal’s clearly been enjoying this morning, too, but I think our American friends need to sort themselves out when they get a moment alone.”

 _Need to sort themselves out when they get a—_ "Oh," Q said. "Oh, you mean—Well. That's good."

"Indeed," James said, a smug look on his face. "I think you'll find that the answer to my question about their relationship would be different as soon as, say, five minutes from now."

"Don't be crude," Q said, but it was an automatic response. "Where's Elizabeth?"

"Here," she said, right behind him, and Q jumped. "Thank you," she said to James, who nodded. She gestured at a painting that looked for all the world like a portrait of a deconstructed elephant. "Now tell me about this blue-green abstract one over here."

Which Q did; he'd done a joint show with the artist, and that took them until Peter and Neal returned, perhaps a little disheveled, from their foray. Peter looked like he'd won the World Cup, and Neal looked like he'd been handed the world _in_ a cup and hadn't the faintest idea of what to do with it. But he seemed—less brittle than he'd been before, Q thought, and after a complicated series of looks between Peter, Neal, and El, Peter announced, "I'm hungry."

“Would that all problems I’m faced with were so easily remedied,” said Q. “There’s a Wagamama nearby, or a cafe at the Tate Modern, if you are all still up for that—”

“A Wagahuh?” said Peter blankly.

“It’s noodles, and really good,” said Neal. “Let’s do that, I’m hungry too.”

“Noodles sound great,” agreed Elizabeth, and it was decided.

The restaurant was only a short walk from the Ceri Hand Gallery, and the sun had come out while they were inside; there was still enough winter left to dig cold fingers into you if the wind picked up, but the warmth of the sunlight made up for it, and Q took off his jacket halfway there. Now that it’d been pointed out to him, he was very aware of the chemistry crackling between Peter and Elizabeth and Neal, the way that Neal was trying not to look at Elizabeth and Peter too much, and vice versa. But they also seemed _happy_ , and for that Q was grateful.

"Wait, it's _ramen_ noodles?" Peter said, staring at the menu before they even walked in the door. "I swore those off the first time I had a paycheck over two hundred dollars—"

"Ramen refers to a kind of noodle, not to the MSG-laden packet you throw on it," Neal said, rolling his eyes. "They also have soba noodles, udon noodles, and oh, pad thai, that's new."

They ordered food without too much fuss and sat down at a table in the corner. Q dug in with gusto; he hadn't eaten breakfast and hadn't realized how hungry he was until he smelled the fragrant aromas of garlic and frying sesame oil. Peter and Neal and El ate with obvious enjoyment, but James was inexplicably picking at his food, pushing the onions to one side and then stirring them back in with the tip of a chopstick. Strange; James normally liked noodles as much as anyone, and Q had rarely seen him refuse food.

His participation in the conversation dwindled, as well; never much for talking about art in the first place, James went from short answers to monosyllables before they'd managed to finish their lunch, to the point where Q actually frowned and put a hand on James' leg under the table.

As if the touch of Q’s hand set him off, James sat up, eyes flickering from a point in the middle distance to Q’s face with all the warmth of the wind outside. “I think I’m actually going to get going,” he said. The conversation at the table cut out, like a plug had been pulled, and James stood up.

“What,” said Q blankly. “Uh, alright?”

James looked at him again, and actually seemed to see him this time; his face softened, but only slightly. “I’m afraid I’ve hit my limit on sight-seeing for one day, Q,” he said. “And I’ve got something I need to see to.”

“Oh,” said Q, for absolute lack of anything better to say. “Well… I’ll see you later, then.”

“Sorry to eat and run,” James said, this time directed at the rest of the table.

“No worries,” said Elizabeth, eyebrows raised. She smiled. “Thanks for coming out with us.”

“Thanks,” Peter echoed, and nodded at James, who returned it with a slight incline of his head.

“See you later,” said Neal.

“Cheers,” James said, and slipped away. Q watched him go, watched him walk to the cashier and take out his wallet, evidently bent on paying for their lunch. He found he didn’t know what to say, or even know exactly what had happened; he was half-tempted to dig out his phone and send a text to James demanding some kind of explanation, except that he was fairly certain he wouldn’t even get a response.

It took him several seconds longer to register the fact that his face hurt, his eyes burning a little as though he’d gotten a face full of salt. Which, to be fair, was how it felt.

He'd thought that . . . well, it didn't really matter what he thought, did it? Because James was leaving, disappearing through the door as he watched, and that was that. "Well," Q said. "Alas, there's only so much art he can take."

Q fumbled distractedly with his phone, head bent by way of hiding his face for a few precious seconds; as he did, it occurred to him that James leaving might technically be a security liability as far as Neal went. In reality, MI5 could take a long walk off a short cliff, as far as Q was concerned—Q was a department head for MI6, and Peter was Neal’s official handler, for God’s sake—but he still took a few moments to send a text message to Agent Malhotra, just so no one could complain too much later.

He lifted his head to find Neal smiling sympathetically at him, while Peter glared in the general direction of the door. Elizabeth said, "But you're staying, aren't you, Q? We've got the Tate Modern to explore."

Neal nodded, and even Peter summoned up an interested look.

"Oh, well, I suppose," Q said, trying not to sound as irritable as he felt. "But—perhaps we could stop for tea first?" Tea. Tea would fix everything.

"High tea?" Elizabeth suggested. "I've never had it."

"Well, it's entirely the wrong time of the day, but we could," Q said. "Or we could pick up tea at Starbucks and go look at _real_ Turners."

“Um, _hello?_ I didn’t come all the way to the UK to get Starbucks. You of all people should know better than to offer us that shameful watering-down of actual tea and coffee.” Neal leveled a reproachful look at Q, who snorted and obliged Neal’s sly dig by kicking him under the table.

“Commentary on legitimacy from a con-artist,” Q said. “The most unimpeachable of sources.”

“Alleged con-artist,” said Peter, and even Q had to laugh.

* * * * *

In the end, they compromised, and stopped at a place along South Bank that Q promised had actual tea, from whole leaves and steeped in a pot, not in individual cups with tea-bags. Peter really didn’t know that much about tea, but Elizabeth did, so he waited patiently while Q, Neal, and El ordered (tea, obviously, plus a Victoria sponge cake and a soda bread roll to share) and sat at a table with them while they waited for the tea to be ready. Elizabeth got herself and Peter good, solid Earl Grey, while Neal ordered a jasmine varietal; Q got a flowering tea, which was ridiculous, but today was a day where he needed a bit of ridiculousness, perhaps, and watching little flower petals unfurl in his cup definitely fit that bill.

When they finished, Q was, actually, feeling much better; maybe he'd needed a fresh infusion of caffeine. Or maybe the banter between Neal and Elizabeth and Peter helped, even though their good cheer was ever so slightly fraught. Maybe more than _slightly_ ; Q knew that he wasn't the best at reading interpersonal relationships, but whatever the case, it drew him out of his own head, and that was good.

They had a leisurely walk over to Tate Modern, although they had to flash an inordinate amount of identification to get in, once they'd gotten there. It was strange to have to convince people that Neal actually _liked_ art, what with him being an art thief and all, and that he might just want to look at it without an ulterior motive, but Peter's steadfast earnestness got them in.

Or maybe Neal's big blue eyes. Q wasn't sure.

Whatever the case, while Peter and Neal were busy arguing their way into the Tate, Q got out his mobile and sent a text to Moneypenny. _Say you’ll have time off this evening, I need a drink and maybe to get knocked upside the head._ The _Of course,_ came back almost immediately, and he smiled despite himself.

He took a moment to send her back a reply: _Brilliant, meet me at the Americans' hotel when you're off. See you then._ Then he put the mobile away again, and made a command decision to stay firmly in the present moment. It wasn’t often that he actually took time off from work, and he was with guests. Friends, even.

“Come on,” he announced, floating up adjacent to the others again and nudging Neal with his elbow, “there’s a Chihuly exhibition on right now that we aren’t missing.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” said Elizabeth, brightening immediately.

Chihuly was a good, safe intersection of everyone's interests; Peter’s whole face lit with delight when he stood right under a chandelier and looked up, and for just a moment Q saw what Neal—and El, for that matter—saw in the man.

They stepped out of the exhibit, Neal still mock-arguing with Elizabeth about the effect of sunshine versus artificial light on the depth of color, and Q sighed. Their conversation died down, and Q turned to see Neal do something complicated with his eyebrows at El while Peter studied a Calder mobile above his head. She gave Neal a short nod, and said, "Peter, there's another Calder mobile two rooms over. Do you want to go see that one?"

Peter looked from Neal to Q to El, and said, "Yes. Yes, I apparently do."

"Subtle, he isn't," Q observed as he and Neal watched the Burkes walk away.

"Not at all," Neal said with a sigh.

“That’s alright, as I believe James still wins the ‘most tactless question’ award during your time here,” said Q. “Anyway, they were good enough to give us a moment alone, so we mustn’t complain.” He fell into step beside Neal, hands slipping into his pockets as they meandered through the exhibition. Graceful glass sculptures blossomed around them, and the shifting daylight coming in through the windows gave many of the sculptures the appearance of breath and movement, like actual sea anemones floating in unseen water. “What’s on your mind, Neal?”

For several moments, Neal gave him no answer. Q was less familiar than Neal’s FBI cohorts with his ever-shifting collection of masks, but he could still read the line of tension down Neal’s spine, the uncertainty in the curve of his neck, the nervous tapping of his fingers against his legs. Abruptly, Neal turned to him and blurted, “How do you do it?”

Q blinked; waited a beat. Then, carefully, he said, “This is referring to the thing that didn't happen with you and Peter back at the last gallery.”

Neal nodded. “It's not just Peter; it's El, too.”

“Ah. So James wasn't so far off the mark after all, I suppose.” Not that Q was exactly surprised at this point, either.

"Not far off at all," Neal said, glancing at Q, and then back at the ground. "And I'm not asking because of the—of your past, but because of your present," he said, words tumbling out in a rush. "How do you make it work?" He winced, and looked around before adding, barely audible, "I still don't know if Kate was the real thing or a long con, and with Peter and El, there—there can't be any of that."

"Well," Q said, feeling his mouth quirk into a smile that felt painful around the edges. He thought for a moment, listening to their footsteps tap quietly against the ceramic floor. "Today being a bit of an exception, I just—" He paused, and considered his next words before continuing. "You know there's an old saying, 'If you can live without someone, do.'”

Neal nodded. “It's shit," Q said, as bluntly as he could.

Neal didn't say anything; his eyes were still on the toes of his shoes, but it was obvious that he was listening, so Q went on. "You could live without either of them, I'm sure." It was his turn to stare at his feet. "I _could_ live without James. I did for years, I was alone, I managed. If I..." Q swallowed. He didn't want to consider this part, but he could tell that Neal needed this conversation. "If I lost him, I'd be a wreck, and it'd be awful. I went through it once, I don't want to again, but." He spread his hands.

“Is that living, though?” Neal pointed out. “Surviving, maybe.”

Q nodded. “Yes. Well-put, that's it exactly. You can survive without people you love. But really living without them ...that’s different.” He thought of Moneypenny as he said this, as well as James, wondering again how he’d managed so long without them in his life.

Again Neal nodded, eyes distant, lost for a moment in thought. “So,” he said, “if I’m willing to risk all that—and god knows I think the decision’s been made already—how do I live _with_ them?”

Q contemplated a response more in line with one of James’ quips, something about leaving the toilet seat down and remembering that oral sex is the best apology, and then set it aside. “Well, I expect it's hard for you like it was hard for me,” he said instead. He left the reasons unstated; he saw no reason to further denigrate the dead, no matter their sins in life. He took a deep breath. “But it's—you just let them in. Even when it scares you or it's something you think they won't like, or won't want to see, or hear. Especially then.” He made a face, and then added, “It does get easier.”

“I was hoping that wasn't the answer,” Neal said lightly. At Q’s look, the one he usually reserved for errant interns, he coughed, and then continued more seriously, “I have absolutely no idea if I'm even capable of doing that.”

“It'll feel a bit like inhaling under water, at first, I expect,” said Q by way of acknowledgment. “But you could tell them that, for a start. Believe or not, I suspect they are already aware of the fact that this scares you. Just... say to them what you've just said to me. As mad as that sounds.”

Neal nodded. "Okay. Okay," he said, the repetition sounding as if it were directed mostly at himself. "I can do this. It's Peter and El. I mean, ‘love is just friendship set on fire,’ right?"

His expression was pained, and while Q didn’t recognize the quote, the accompanying emotion was plain enough to read, and he reached out to put his hand on the other man's shoulder. "Neal, you have perhaps picked the most well-adjusted couple I have ever seen in my life to fall for. If they feel the same about you—" And Q had little doubt that they did, between the quality of the warm looks that Elizabeth gave Neal and Peter's utter lack of subtlety. "—you're already ahead of the game. Also," he added, unable to stop the smile. "Please know how hilarious it is that you've asked _me_ for advice; the man I'm dating has the most checkered past of any agent MI6 has ever had."

"Well, I can't ask them," Neal shot back, irritation laid over good humor, "and the only other person I _could_ ask is probably Mozzie. I think we both know what he would say." He chuckled, and then sobered, looking completely sincere as he spoke. "Besides, I think you give yourself and your agent too little credit."

“Maybe,” Q said ruefully. “I still have no idea where he buggered off to, though.” Q went silent as he and Neal slowed to a halt, stopping in front of the huge, arresting fire-tree that sat in pride of place in one of the Tate’s larger rooms, sat right in front of a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the Thames. The “tree” was made of hundreds of lissome glass arms, in gold and red and orange, all of them wrapping up and around each other in an intricate dance, catching the light from the day outside. It was nothing short of magnificent, and for a moment Q and Neal simply stood in front of it, soaking in its beauty.

The sight lifted something from Q’s chest, and he let out a slow breath. Neal glanced at him, and then ventured, “Does he often, ah, disappear?”

“From time to time,” said Q. “Not for long, usually. And I do think he’ll tell me where he’s gone today, he’s just.” Q bit his lip, and then, sounding at once bashful and slightly defensive, “I’m not 100 percent sure, but I think I’m the longest relationship he’s ever been in. Which is slightly less than six months, so.”

Beside him, Neal blinked, and Q tensed for a moment, but Neal said merely, “Oh. Hazards of the job, I suppose? I mean, I’m not trying to pry—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” said Q. “I’m fairly certain you already know all the juiciest bits of my past, anyway.”

Neal slanted him a look, and clearly chose and discarded several words before saying, "It looks to me like Bond is trying to work something out in his head."

Q sighed. "I'd thought that as well. I wish I knew what it was."

"Well, you did say you thought he'd tell you where he'd been, so hopefully that will help." Neal's statement had a note of finality to it, which seemed to signal the end of the relationship-discussion time.

Which was just fine with Q. "He's terrible at doing things normally," he said, with no small amount of affection in his tone. "Do you know, when we first were—approaching dating, he kept trying to locate and break into my flat."

"I'd wondered about that," Neal said. "He made some reference at dinner, I think." His smile turned wistful as he added, "Peter set up surveillance on El before he asked her out."

Q let out a delighted laugh. "Did he!" Neal nodded, prideful and sheepish all at the same time. "James hacked my high-security file. Naturally." Q glanced at Neal, mouth quirked. "So nice to hear someone shares my malfunction in partners."

Neal grinned. Q smiled back. For a few moments, nothing else was necessary.

“We’d better go find them,” Neal said finally, with obvious reluctance.

“Agreed,” said Q. “Agents have this habit of breaking expensive equipment when left to their own devices for too long.”

Neal made a noise in his throat; Q glanced over to see that he was grinning at the wall ahead of them. “I think that’s just yours,” Neal noted.

“Ah,” said Q. “I suppose I got lucky, then.”

“You have an interesting definition of ‘lucky,’” said Neal, but he sounded more genuinely cheerful than he had almost all day, and Q decided to count it as a win.

* * * * *

"What was that all about?" Peter asked Elizabeth after she dragged him into another room that, in fact, did not contain any such Calder mobile, but she just shook her head. She had that look on her face, the one that said that if he could figure it out, great, but if not, she wasn't going to say anything. He knew by now not to even try to pry it out of her, and just sighed.

Besides, he honestly wasn't as much of a philistine as he pretended to be, and exploring a couple of rooms in an art museum with his lovely, aesthetically-minded wife wasn't exactly a hardship. If Q and Neal wanted to talk without him for a moment, it was fine.

Speaking of, Neal was finally interacting with him and El in a fashion that approached normal, and wasn't it strange how good _that_ felt. Peter felt his face spread in a smile, and it wasn't because of the Renoir statue he and El were circling.

El stopped, looked at him, and said, "You're thinking about Neal."

No use in lying, and no one was near enough to hear. "Aren't you?"

El smiled, warm and fond, and said, "Yes, but I'm not the one who just kissed him in a—what was it, a broom closet?"

"A supply closet of some sort, yes," he said. "He kissed me back, El." He'd had enough space earlier to give El a thumbs-up behind Neal's and Q's backs, but not enough to tell her what happened. "He was apparently eaten up with shame that he'd kissed you this morning."

She twisted her lips to one side. "I was afraid that was the case. I wasn't sure he noticed you were awake."

Peter snorted. "I wasn't snoring, so he should have just assumed, if you're to be believed."

El smiled, and then sobered. "Still. We have a lot to talk about, and I don't know if we'll have time."

As if in echo of that sentiment, Peter's phone vibrated in his pocket. Peter pulled it out and flipped it open, putting it to his ear with an automatic “Burke.”

“Boss, we got a situation here.” Diana’s voice was terse, and Peter frowned, turning away from El and straightening.

“What’s wrong?”

“Someone broke into our hotel room.”

“WHAT?” Next to him, El’s eyebrows went up into her hair. Peter covered the phone speaker and mouthed _go get Neal and Q_. Something must have shown in his face, because she pressed her lips together, gave a short nod, and then turned and headed swiftly into the next room to seek out their wayward companions. “Keep talking,” Peter said tightly.

“I got back with Jack about ten minutes ago, and Eve Moneypenny was here; she was apparently waiting here to meet Q. We got upstairs and surprised some woman in Neal’s room. Agent Moneypenny’s after her now, she went out the window after the intruder.”

“Jesus,” said Peter. “Wait, did you say she went out the _window_?”

"Yes, both the intruder and Agent Moneypenny," Diana said.

Peter thought fast. "Where's Jack?"

"He went after them."

"Then you should probably stay and secure the room. Call Agent Malhotra. I'll round up El and Neal and Q and bring them back—unless you think that the room isn't safe."

"I think we should move to a different location, Boss, and I think you better keep the civilians away for right now. I'll call Malhotra."

"Got it," Peter said, and he heard El's heels again; looking up, he saw her with a worried-looking Q and Neal. He held up a finger, and said to Diana, "I’ll get everyone here somewhere safe and be right over. Keep me posted if anything changes."

"Will do, Boss."

He ended the call, and said to the other three, "The hotel room was broken into. We have to go back. Moneypenny’s chasing the suspect right now." Three pairs of eyes went wide. Peter didn't want to give them any more details, not in a location this insecure, but they seemed to recognize this; he got a chorus of nods and swift movement, not any questions, and everyone headed quickly for the door. 

So much for a simple trip to the UK to investigate a break-in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [Ceri Hand Gallery](http://www.cerihand.co.uk/information/about/). The [inspiration for Q's fractals](http://www.techrepublic.com/photos/amazing-flame-fractals-take-your-breath-away/33277?seq=50&tag=thumbnail-view-selector;get-photo-roto). If you have somehow not heard of Dale Chihuly, you should definitely check out his [glorious glass art](http://www.chihuly.com/glass-series.aspx), which is frequently on tour. The [fire tree](http://i.imgur.com/wd8Dq6Y.jpg) that Q and Neal stopped in front of.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moneypenny gets a glimpse of the intruder, Bond and El get dinner, and Q gets some action, but what no one gets is answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY FOR HOW LONG THIS TOOK! I got absolutely killed by finals week, but here we are, free at last! Next chapter should come much more quickly. Kisses as always to my beautiful and patient co-author and wonderful beta. Thanks for reading!

On the list of things she was expecting to do today, Eve Moneypenny might've put "trash-talk James Bond, consume alcohol, answer at least one panicked phone call from a high-level British government official." And she had done some of those, but right now, she was ducking under a rusty railing and cursing herself for stepping in a pile of goose droppings as she chased the intruder across London’s rooftops.

She had done a lot of extraordinary things over the course of her career at MI6, included but not limited to: shooting and not-quite-killing-Agent 007 in Istanbul; fighting a polar bear and winning; infiltrating the offices of corrupt diplomats in a number of foreign countries, both with and without explicit blessing from the British Government; swimming across Chesapeake Bay (something the American government still didn’t know about, thank you very much); and extracting Gareth Mallory from a diplomatic conference gone extremely south just four short months after his promotion to M.

And that was completely aside from the day-to-day business of keeping MI6 running smoothly. Being a good friend to Q (and now, by extension, James Bond), pursuing her love of flying, learning new and improved ways to injure herself via yoga and pilates, slowly accumulating proficiency with every type of firearm Q could put in her hands, and keeping up the facade of a normal life to her mother were all theoretically relegated to her spare time. In short, she was more than used to extraordinary demands—it was a feature of her new position, not a drawback, and one of the things she loved most about her work.

She didn't, however, love sprinting a hundred meters above the ground in pursuit of a black-suited woman who would give even Usain Bolt a run for his money.

Or, if not an Olympic sprinter, then maybe a mountain goat: something sure-footed and at home in the heights, Eve thought, as she saw the woman balance on the edge of a railing on the balls of her feet and then vault to the next building over. She herself didn't follow the same route; there was a narrow crosswalk some four or five meters over, and she tore across it so quickly it creaked under her.

She spared a moment to be grateful for whatever impulse had made her choose trousers today instead of a skirt, mentally congratulating herself on only working in shoes she could run three miles in, and then returned her focus to her pursuit. The woman pelted across the roof of the department store they’d alighted on; Eve could see the gun at her hip, the leather bag slung across her back still half-open. Eve and Diana had surprised the woman in the middle of something, though Eve hadn’t taken the time to find out what—she’d just gone up and out the window after the culprit.

Static crackled in her ear, a hiss-spit of electricity from her Bluetooth earpiece. “Moneypenny,” said Q in her ear, “Do you copy?”

“Not now, Q!” Eve gritted her teeth as the woman leapt over the side of the building. She dashed to the edge, and saw her target shimmying down the side, limber as a rhesus monkey. “Goddammit,” Eve muttered, and swung herself over the side, catching the metal fire escape hard with her hand, sending a shock of pain up her arm to her shoulder, her grip almost giving way. “Fuck!”

She clung on, swinging her other hand up to catch herself, and then turned to squint at her target, two floors below her and almost to the ground. Eve narrowed her eyes, and swung her feet together like a human pendulum, rocking her hips on the swing back for some extra momentum, and then letting go at the last possible minute, aiming with both feet at the spot below her and to the right where her target would pass in moments.

It worked; they landed in a heap, Eve on the other woman's side and back. She'd jarred her right knee in the landing but not hard enough to keep her from catching the woman's wrists in one hand, behind her back, and snarling, "Who are you?"

Somehow, though, the woman twisted to one side and got one hand loose, slamming it into Eve's ribs and dislodging her. Eve managed to uncurl herself before the woman could run away and threw herself at the woman's hips, wrestling her to the ground, and finally turning her around to get a good look at her face.

She was older than Eve would have expected, maybe in her forties, and some east Asian ethnicity, possibly Chinese, and glaring at Eve with blacker hate than Eve had ever seen. That was all Eve had the time to see before the woman twisted, ramming her shoulder into Eve's jaw and stunning her temporarily into letting go. Almost instantly the woman scrambled to her feet and took off running; Eve tried to follow, but her knee collapsed under her like someone had cut a string, and she cursed in three languages.

“Are you alright?” Q demanded in her ear, and Eve sighed, hauling herself to her feet again and leaning heavily against the wall next to her as she caught her breath.

“Buggered my knee a bit, not bad,” she said after a moment, slightly ragged. “Lost her. She got me by surprise, right in the jaw.”

“Bloody hell.” Q sighed; she could almost picture the way he would be pursing his lips. “Did you get a look at her face?”

“I did, yes. Didn’t recognize her.” Eve shook her head, though Q wasn’t there to see it. “Just… meet me back at the hotel, yeah? I’ll flag down a ride.”

“Got it. Good work, Moneypants.”

“Shut it, you.” Eve straightened, tentatively putting a bit more weight on her knee; this time it didn’t spasm, though she thought it would definitely be sore. She headed out towards the road, raising her arm to flag down one of the many cabs going by.

Whoever it was that had tampered with Neal Caffrey’s tracker, they weren’t messing around.

* * * * *

By the time they managed to get back to the now-compromised hotel, Q had traced Moneypenny’s route and pulled the CCTV logs of every square inch of landscape that she had so much as passed near that had a camera pointed at it. He sent it all to his secure cloud storage, there to be retrieved whenever he arrived at a computer that had the processing power or he got sick of waiting and did it the hard way on his phone, whichever came first.

He paid the driver before Peter had a chance to get out his wallet, putting it on his business account to be worried about later. (Vicky, the head of accounts, was going to actually poison his tea one of these days for all the bullshit Q sent her way on a regular basis, but then it wasn’t a week at MI6 without a death threat from _someone_.) Q spilled out of the car, hovering on the pavement just long enough for the others to exit the car before making a bee-line for the front door of the hotel, anxious to lay eyes on Moneypenny and hear what the hell had happened.

Agent Berrigan met him at the front door, nodding at him and looking past him to Peter, who followed close behind. “We should get out of here,” she said, when Peter was close enough for a consult. Peter said something in response, but Q had already ducked into the building and was looking around for Moneypenny.

“Q,” said the woman in question, approaching him at a fast walk as she came across the lobby.

“You got here quick,” Q said, relief coloring his voice at the sight of her. He’d known she was just fine, of course, but today was starting to take its toll on his nerves. 

“I was only a few minutes away,” she said, and shrugged. She looked considerably sweatier than most women would at the end of a work-day, and the sharp three-piece grey suit she was wearing was badly in need of a dry-clean from her sprint, but otherwise she seemed no worse for the wear. Which was odd, considering what she’d said about her knee. Well, he wouldn’t press her about it in mixed company. “Did you get anything?” she asked.

“Got the CCTV logs, haven’t had a chance to look at them yet,” said Q, and then paused before adding delicately, “And I suspect that here is not the place to do it, either.”

"No, it isn't," Peter said, coming up behind them. "Malhotra's volunteered . . . his place."

By which Peter presumably meant MI5's headquarters. "That will work," he said, and wondered if he could run to MI6 or to his apartment to get his own laptop. He was certain that MI5 would have something he could borrow, but just as certain that he wouldn't want to.

Or he could send someone else. Where was James, anyway? It had been several hours, so Q felt entirely justified in sending him a text message: _Where are you? There's been a break-in at the hotel. Can you bring my laptop to—_ He broke off in his typing, realizing that they hadn't actually made a decision where to go yet. "Are we going there, then?" 

"It'll be a few minutes," Peter said. "We're going to pack first."

Ah. He had a bit of time, then. _—to the hotel?_ Q finished the text, and hit send.

The response came back in under thirty seconds. _I can be there in twenty minutes with your computer. Are you hurt?_

Q smiled despite himself. It wasn’t entirely unjustified, considering a few serious incidents in their personal history, but James always acted as though Q would wind up with eighteen lacerations and half his bones broken at the slightest incident. _We’re all fine, just please get here. See you in a bit._

 _On my way,_ the text came back. Q slipped his phone into his pocket and went upstairs to help his friends pack.

They only had to wait a few minutes after finishing in the suite before a car pulled up to the curb outside the hotel, and at the sight of it Q felt his face heat, though no one was looking at _him_. Well, that wasn’t quite true. Moneypenny was giving him a meaningful look that Q was resolutely not returning.

“Is that an Aston Martin?” said Neal, surprise and admiration warming his voice. Of course Neal would recognize it.

“A DB5,” said Q resignedly. “Yes.” He didn’t mention the modified M134 mini-machine guns tucked away under the hood, or any of the other modifications he’d seen to; no need to scare the tourists. The car went silent, and James emerged smoothly from the driver’s side, clad in one of the suits that Q thought of as his “working” repertoire.

“Is that car really necessary?” asked Q. James gave him a serene smile by way of response, and Q pursed his lips. “You are such a show-off.”

“Don’t listen to him,” James said to Peter and Neal as they approached. “He gave it to me.” Q flushed.

"Is that a V12 engine?" Peter said, holding one hand out in the direction of the hood, but not touching. And of course he'd be a car person, too. Q sighed, but Peter snapped himself out of the car-induced fog and said, "Anyway, not important now. We've got to go to, uh, Agent Malhotra's. El, sweetie, do you have a book, or do we need to stop for something?" They'd agreed that she could wait in someone's office; her presence in MI5's headquarters certainly wouldn't be a security breach.

Elizabeth nodded. "I'm good."

They all piled into cars—Q and James into the Aston Martin, Moneypenny, Diana, and Jack into Moneypenny's car, and Peter, Neal, El, and Malhotra into Malhotra's. Q didn't bother asking James any questions on the drive over, because James had the particular bland, urbane face on that meant that he'd deflect or flat-out refuse to answer anything other than small talk about the weather, but he did catch him up on what had happened at the hotel.

"Across the rooftops and down the side of a building?" James said at one point.

"Why, yes," Q said. "It's almost like she was a field agent at one point, or something."

James' lips twisted. "Point."

They reached MI5 and parked in the underground lot, flashing MI6 IDs when they reached the door. Malhotra had called ahead and put their names on a list, but Q still submitted to a search of his computer bag with thinly-concealed impatience. If he wanted to take down MI5, which he most certainly did _not_ , he wouldn't have needed to come anywhere near the building.

Obviously he didn't mention that to the security guard.

The group reconvened in the lobby, near the lifts, and Agent Malhotra said, "Mrs. Burke, if you'll be so kind as to—"

"Actually," El said, interrupting in possibly the most polite fashion Q had ever heard in his life (which was saying something, as he was British and they had the patent on it). "I thought that perhaps since Mr. Bond and I are both at loose ends in this group, that he might be available to escort me to dinner? I'm a little hungry." She gave a sheepish smile.

Q narrowed his eyes. On the one hand, it was true: James really didn't have anything to do. On the other hand, El was clearly being manipulative, but Q had _no_ idea what her goal was.

James was looking at El with a faint smile on his face. “Why not,” he said after a moment. “It would be my great pleasure to take you out, Mrs. Burke. I’m terrible at paperwork anyway.”

“You’re not terrible at it, you just hate it,” observed Q, and James shrugged in beatific agreement.

“Well, you’d certainly be safe enough,” said Peter. Q’s estimation of Peter Burke went up a few notches when he realized that Peter didn’t look even slightly jealous, only amused. “And you’ll have a lot more fun than we’re going to be having for a few hours.” Q thought of the dozens of camera records and computer files he himself would be poring over, and felt himself deflate a little.

“You may want to keep an eye on your virtue, though,” interjected Moneypenny with a sly smile. Q shot her a dirty look, but James chose not to notice.

Elizabeth just laughed. “If I can survive Neal Caffrey with my virtue intact, I think I’m good to go,” she said cheerfully.

Neal had a very complicated look on his face for a moment, but a second or two later, he said, "Apparently I haven't been trying hard enough." He grinned, to make it obvious that he was joking, and El swatted his shoulder with clear affection.

Peter said, "Hey," but no one paid him any attention, and Q thought that he'd probably intended it that way.

James held out his arm, and El took it. "We'll be in contact," he said, and he slid his fingertips over the back of Q's hand in a subtle caress as he passed by him.

Q watched them go for a moment—damn, James always looked fine in those suits of his, and he very much wished that _he_ was going to supper with him right now—and then turned back. "Right, then. Where is this conference room of yours?"

Besides, he told himself, he'd get James afterwards.

* * * * *

It didn't occur to El until she'd followed Bond back to the parking garage that yes, she'd just strong-armed one of the most dangerous men in England—and definitely the most dangerous man she knew—into taking her to dinner, and that might be a problem. However, she'd spent enough time sitting in a government office with a book; she genuinely was hungry; and Bond seemed a little—itchy. A little set apart, as if he didn't entirely belong with the group either, and he wouldn't mind leaving.

Once they got to the car—oh, right: riding in the Aston Martin was also a draw—Bond turned to her and said, "How fancy do you want to go?"

El looked down at her dress (royal blue, knee-length, with a black structured cardigan over it) and said, "Honestly, this is the nicest dress I have, so let's not go past this level." She gestured to herself.

Bond gave her a very obvious once-over, from her black heels (low enough to make walking comfortable) all the way up to her hair, lingering expressively near her cleavage. Even though it was so over the top as to be comical, considering that her affections were otherwise engaged and so, clearly, were his, she still flushed, and his lips spread in a slow smile. "I know just the place," he said, and held the door open for her.

“So,” said Elizabeth, once Bond had come around to the driver’s side and gotten in, “where are you taking me?”

He glanced over at her. “Au Revoir. Primarily French food, but it also has plenty of other things to choose from. High-end Continental cuisine.”

El beamed. “Excellent.” Bond smiled again, warm enough to make her hot under her non-existent collar, and he turned the key in the ignition. The car rumbled into life, the purr of the engine deep and dark like some kind of animal; El didn’t know that much about cars but she spared a moment to admire the quality of the vehicle in which she currently rode. She set her hand on the door, stroking it along the varnished wood. “This is really nice. It was a gift from Q, you said?”

Bond’s face softened slightly; El would’ve missed it if she hadn’t actively been watching for it. “It was,” he said. “A very unexpected one. There’s a lot of—” He paused, guiding the car into traffic as he looked for the right word. “—a lot of history there. I lost a car like this in a mission that went badly south. Among a great many other things.”

“How lovely. Peter usually just buys me jewelry or flowers. Well, and a puppy, once, but nothing this . . . luxurious.” God, the seats were real leather. It was showier than any car Elizabeth would ever have wanted to own, but that didn’t stop her from appreciating it.

Bond cast a sly glance at her. “He got you Neal, didn't he?”

El laughed, a peal startled out of her. "I suppose," she said. "Well, not yet, really. Not that—" And that was moving into too much information, so she coughed. "Well, anyway. Q—you and he met at work, I suppose?"

Bond replied without looking at her, his eyes on the road as he drove them into a different part of London. "We did, yes. Rather adversarial at first. I didn't think much of him, and the feeling was mutual."

"Oh." El hadn't known what she expected, but that wasn't it. "That apparently changed."

"It did," he said. "Competence in the face of adversity has that effect. As does finding you are able to rely on someone." Despite traffic, he slid a glance at her. "How about yourself? How did you meet Peter?"

She'd told this story many times. "Oh, we met during a case of his; I was a witness, and I was under surveillance at work. Every time he'd talk to me, he'd get flustered, and drop brick-sized hints that he wanted to ask me on a date, but he never managed to do so. Finally I just looked straight at the window where he and his camera were set up and held up a sign that said, ‘I ♥ Italian!’ and, well, the rest is history."

Apparently it was Bond's turn for an unexpected response; he laughed out loud, grinning outright at her for the first time all day. "Impressive," he said. "How long have you been married?"

El saw the sign for the restaurant right when Bond slowed the car down to stop in front of the restaurant, and waited until he wasn't about to get hit by some driver in a Mini before she replied. "Eleven and a half years, with about six months of dating before that." She counted in her head, and added with a chuckle, "Maybe not even six months."

“That quickly?” Bond glanced at her, seemingly intrigued, but said nothing further as he pulled over. A young man in a dark, formal uniform darted out to El’s side of the car, opening the door to help her out before heading around to Bond’s side to take the keys from him. 

El waited until Bond had come around to join her on the pavement, smiling slightly at the old-fashioned formality of the situation. It was exactly what she’d been hoping for, and beat the pants off her battered paperback plus an uncomfortable chair somewhere at MI5 headquarters. Bond extended his arm to her, and she took it. “Sometimes you just know,” said El, picking up where they’d left off without missing a beat. “And then sometimes you don’t realize that it’s happened for _years_.”

“Are you and Peter in agreement about him, then?” Bond’s tone was perfectly measured and polite; they might have been talking about which puppy to bring home from the pound, instead of inviting a longed-for lover with baggage to spare into a ten-year marriage. Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at Bond, and he offered her a twist of a smile in response.

“That’s a complicated question, isn’t it.”

“It is,” he agreed, and then they were inside at the concierge’s desk. Au Revoir was as classic as it came, full of deliberate old-world charm: wood paneling, huge prints of Renaissance-era paintings and frescoes adorning the walls, dusky mood lighting, white tablecloths on every surface, and a smoothly efficient waitstaff. It looked full up to El’s eyes, but when the host heard _James Bond_ , he nodded and stepped out from behind the stand with two menus.

“This way, please, Commander,” he said, and led them through the restaurant to a table towards the rear.

“Oohhh, Commander,” El teased, and Bond made a face at her and shrugged. “Do you always pull rank when you want a table?”

“I was introduced to this place while I was still in the Navy,” he said. “The brother of my commanding officer owns the restaurant, so they always take excellent care of military personnel.”

“And here I thought you just liked showing off,” she said lightly. He grinned at her as he held her chair for her to sit down, managing to push it in under her without bashing the backs of her knees, and then came around the table to sit across from her.

“You were saying,” he prompted, as he sank into his chair and reached for a menu, though his eyes remained on her.

He was apparently fairly interested in the topic. El supposed she couldn’t entirely blame him, considering the circumstances. “Mmm, yes. Well… Peter fell first, but he didn’t—” El bit her lip. “I don’t think he knew it until I pointed it out a few months ago. The first time I actually met Neal, I understood, and…” She trailed off, spreading her hands encompassingly.

"You make it sound so simple," Bond said, and El had to admit that she probably did. "I suppose with eleven years of practice it would get a bit easier to tackle something like that, though." He picked up the wine menu, and gave her a careful look. "Shall we get a bottle of wine, Mrs. Burke?"

He smiled, deliberately turning up the charm now; it was nearly palpable, much more of a show than even Neal's charisma, and it was obvious that he wanted her to enjoy herself.

Well. Two could play at that game. El smiled back, putting a little heat and mystery in her expression, and leaned over the table just a tiny bit more. "Yes, I think we shall."

The way Bond's eyes dipped ever so slightly, but entirely on purpose, meant that it was probably a draw, but El had no doubt that he could win if only he exerted himself a touch more. "Red or white?" he asked.

"Red, I think."

“Italian? Or New World?”

El raised her eyebrows at him. “Either is fine with me, but... since we’re in Europe, do Italian,” she said.

He smiled, as if her answer told him something very profound about her, and signaled for the server. "We'll have a bottle of the Il Poggione Vino de Nobile, the ‘73 vintage," he said.

“Excellent choice, sir,” said the server, and vanished.

El looked over the menu, already ravenous just at the smells emanating from the direction of the kitchen. She spared a moment to feel guilty for her husband and for Neal; she hoped they’d at least called for delivery. “You've been here before, obviously. What would you recommend?”

“The duck confit is superb, as is the pork shoulder with the apricot demi-glace. And they have a seasonal risotto that's always excellent.” Bond glanced at her over the top of his menu. “Would you care for a starter?”

“Definitely,” said El. “How about the moules-frites?”

“Perfect,” said Bond. The waiter returned as if on cue, presenting the bottle and looking expectantly at Bond, who gestured instead to Elizabeth. “The lady will be the judge,” he said politely, and El didn’t know if he was humoring her or testing her or some other unknown option, but she was game.

The wine was excellent, of course. Vapolicella Ripasso was a little beyond what she normally drank except for special occasions, but she _was_ in London.

The waiter recited the specials for them, and then modestly cast his eyes down. Bond looked across the table at her again, and El spent approximately three seconds debating the merits of letting him order for her before deciding that some traditions were for the birds. “I’ll have the pork shoulder with apricot demi-glace,” she said, and passed over the menu.

Bond smiled at her, fleeting but warm. “I’ll have the duck confit,” he said, “and we’ll take the moules-frites to start.” He passed over his menu as well, and inclined his head to her. Fifty points for Elizabeth Burke.

"Excellent choices," the waiter said, and disappeared.

Bond raised his glass, and said, "Cheers, Elizabeth," and she raised hers as well. She'd definitely have to remember the kind of wine; Neal would like it as well.

"So," Bond said a moment later, "do you often find yourself at loose ends while your husband works late?" The grin tugging at his mouth made it clear that he was perfectly aware of how flirtatious that sounded, but as neither he nor Q likely worked terribly regular hours, it was just amusing to El.

"Why, Mr. Bond," El said with a laugh, "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

"James, please," he said. "I'm not on the clock at the moment."

She smiled by way of acknowledgment, then tilted her head a little and said, "I'm an event planner, so sometimes I'm the one working late. But I understand your question, and sometimes, yes, I'm sitting up waiting for Peter to come home. He's terrible at remembering to text and tell me that he'll be late, but sometimes Neal reminds him, or just texts me himself." Mostly the latter, especially in the last few months.

Perhaps James guessed at this, or maybe she was just reading too much into his body language; he smiled faintly as he shifted position. Resting his forearms against the table, he leaned forward and asked, "How long have you two had Neal in your life?"

El blinked. "You mean in person, right?"

James gave her a strange look, and she struggled to explain. "Because when Neal was, well, a less-reformed alleged con artist and art thief, Peter was in charge of his case, and spent practically all of his time thinking about him, going through his file, for just that one thing that would allow Peter to catch him. And then he did, and there was the trial."

That had been difficult, even as it supposedly represented a triumph for Peter, the FBI, and the legal system. "Even while Neal was in jail he was on his mind, and then . . . " She trailed off. She wasn't sure how much of Neal's history James actually knew, but she could actually _answer his question_ at some point. "Well, the in-person part is about a year and a half now, since Neal's been out on, essentially, work-release. Sort of. He still had a girlfriend for the first few months." She paused. "Er. This is getting complicated, isn't it."

“Is anything not?” asked James, with more than a touch of irony. He poured himself a little more wine before refilling her glass as well, pausing as their appetizer arrived. “And yet you welcome this new person into your life. I expect most women would be jealous.”

“Probably,” said Elizabeth. “But have you _seen_ Neal?”

“Point,” said James, and Elizabeth grinned.

“Anyway,” she continued. “More realistically… Peter and I are solid. Nothing could change that. This is…” She gestured with her fork. “In addition to us.”

“I see.” From the tone of his voice, Elizabeth wasn’t entirely sure that he did, but was at least willing to believe that she knew what she was talking about. Her stomach growled spectacularly at the garlic-butter scent of the mussels, and James hid a smile behind his wine glass as she helped herself to some food. “If I can ask—jumping back a bit—did Peter ask you to marry him? Or did you ask him?”

That was an odd question, El thought. She answered it anyway. “Oh, he asked me. I wasn't really expecting it—wasn't _not_ expecting it, either. He was trying to do it very traditionally, dinner, white tablecloth, champagne. And then he lost the ring under the table, and spilled the champagne trying to get it…” Elizabeth couldn’t help the fondness in her voice as she laughed, but then why would she want to? “It was perfect, and perfectly Peter.”

James was smiling slightly as she related this to him, though his eyes had gone distant, focused on something (or some _one_ ) not present, mind running a parallel track to their conversation. “And you said yes, of course,” he said. “And now you have a relationship most sane people would envy.” He sipped his wine, and El thought he seemed to be coming around to a thought, though he refrained for a moment in favor of starting in on his plate of mussels and fries.

They ate in companionable silence for a minute or so, and El was starting to think he’d let the topic go altogether, when he said, finally, “How do you do it?”

El ate another mussel, chewing and swallowing as she thought of what to say—or, well, more accurately, how to say it. "I've been asked that before," she said slowly, "and I'm never sure how to answer it, because what works for us probably won't work for a lot of people. It's partially dependent on Peter being Peter, and me being me." _Mostly Peter being Peter_ , she thought, but didn't say it. "The only things we don't tell each other are the things he legally can't, and things we don't need to know, like how many spiders there really are in the basement."

James' lips quirked a bit at that.

"Not all relationships can handle that kind of stark honesty, but we can't really do without it." She paused and looked at him, directly. "But I think what you're really asking—the answer is, you just _do_ it. You wake up every day and every day is better because he's in it, and you want to keep it that way, so you . . . do."

He held her gaze for a moment, and she kept her eyes level, her expression impassive. "How do you keep from worrying about the future?" he asked, still not looking away. "Or do you?" Finally he glanced down, frowning slightly—though not, she thought, at her.

El shrugged. "We worry about it all the time, separately and together, but it's the together part that makes a difference. Not just looking at each other, but looking in the same direction." It was an Antoine de Saint-Exupery quote, not from _The Little Prince_ , but still one of her favorites. She didn't know if he got the reference, but he appeared to understand the sentiment, nodding slowly, clearly digesting her words.

"I see," he said, a long moment later. "Food for thought." He smiled at her, a lightning-quick change from James-the-man to James-the-charmer, and straightened a little before saying, "Speaking of food, how is yours?"

That was the end of that, she thought. “It’s fantastic,” she said honestly, and matched his smile with one of her own.

“I expect nothing less,” he responded, and raised her glass to hers. “Cheers, Elizabeth.”

“Cheers, James,” she said. _I hope you find the real answer you’re looking for, mister,_ she added mentally, and they both drank on it.

* * * * *

Q was one of those lucky souls who would have woken up every day to do the same work he was being paid for even if no one was footing his paycheck; he loved his job and often had to be dragged away from it over strenuous objections. It was one of the reasons he was head of Q Branch.

Today was a definite exception to that rule, though. By the time their long evening of poring over CCTV footage, criminal records, and endlessly debating theories was over, Q was ready to melt into a puddle and drip away down the drain. He sat slumped in the chair, a bottle of Q Goo in one hand—he had no idea how Q Goo had migrated from MI6 to MI5, but it was there and he was grateful for it—and watched as the assorted agents packed up their paperwork and electronics. Moneypenny was going to be giving him a ride home, because she was actually a saint who happened to adopt him as her best mate, to his everlasting gratitude, but she’d had to duck out for a moment to put in a phone call to M. 

(Unbeknownst to most of MI6, Moneypenny was far more more than merely M’s secretary; she’d been promoted from field agent to his most trusted and relied-on right hand. She did whatever M needed doing, and it was vaguely comforting to Q to know that their Fearless Leader had taken a personal interest in this situation, enough to send Moneypenny to keep tabs on things. Then again, she _had_ been the one to go haring after the intruder across the rooftops of London; it wasn’t as if anyone had questioned why she was here.)

He idly brought up Neal's tracker logs as he waited for Moneypenny to return, and then his own, noting where they matched. A few clicks brought up Peter's and Elizabeth's mobiles, also matching Neal's and Q's while they were at the museum, and then, in a moment of (in his opinion) much-needed paranoia, he brought up a map with logs for all the trackers and mobiles he cared about: his own, Neal's, Peter's, Elizabeth's, Jack's, Diana's, Moneypenny's, Malhotra's, and James'.

Malhotra's was simple; he'd been at work all day, and hadn't even left the building for lunch. Jack and Diana had, actually, been at the Natural History Museum, and had eaten lunch someplace nearby that Q didn't recognize. Moneypenny's reflected her race across the rooftops, but other than that, she'd been at MI6 other than a run to A Piece of Cake.

James' logs, though—he'd driven out to the edge of town, and he'd stayed there about twenty minutes; the rest of the logs looked like him motoring about aimlessly. Q checked the coordinates against a map and saw that he'd been to Putney Vale Cemetery. Which sounded familiar, but it took a moment for Q's brain to process and remember why—and when he did, he felt physically ill for a few moments, the dizziness as powerful as it was swift. Peter glanced over at him with a frown, but Q shook his head and shrugged, and Peter went back to his mobile phone after a moment.

Q had been to the graveyard James visited today exactly once. It had been for the funeral of Barbara Mawdsley, the previous M. James had been there too; that was before Q and James had known each other as anything more than co-workers, and at the time Q had been so wracked with guilt over his own part in M’s death that he’d spared little thought for anyone else present, but now he couldn’t help but wonder what it was that had prompted his lover to leave him so abruptly, only to return to the memorial of their partnership’s worst failure and greatest loss.

He knew that M had meant yet more to James than she’d meant to Q, though James had never seen fit to elaborate on exactly what M had been to him aside from a superior and a mentor. But perhaps he didn’t need to know.

Q glanced up as the door opened again and Moneypenny re-appeared, tucking her mobile into a nearly-invisible pocket of her tailored suit. She must have seen something in his face, because her eyebrow went up, the question on her lips to ask him what was wrong. Q shook his head and mouthed _not here_ , and she nodded. 

“How do you always manage to look so posh?” he asked instead, trying and failing not to sound peevish.

“Field Agent Finishing School,” she said with a smirk. “Practice makes perfect, boffin.”

Finishing School, his arse. He shook his head, stood, waved good-bye at the others, grabbed his laptop bag, and followed her to her car. Once inside, she asked, "Are we making a stop first, or straight to your flat? And are you going to tell me why you looked like you inhaled sour milk just now?"

"Urgh," Q said, or something like it. "Let's just go to the flat. I have wine. I’ll tell you when we’re in." He slumped a little lower in the seat, his knees nearly touching the dash.

"Wine for supper it is," she said, and merged neatly into traffic. She took a route that wasn't one he normally took, but it was more than circuitous enough for his still-paranoid mind, and thirty-five minutes later they were in his flat, Carly weaving a figure-eight pattern around Moneypenny's ankles, the traitorous little beast.

"Well, hello, there," Moneypenny said, and picked Carly up, digging her fingers into her fur as Q dumped his laptop on the counter and found the bottle of wine and two glasses. Carly, of course, was purring so loudly Q could hear her in the kitchen.

"Reading room?" Moneypenny said as Q came out, the bag over his shoulder again.

"Sure," he said. He made a quick detour to his bedroom to drop off the laptop bag and his shoes, and then met her in the reading room, already ensconced in a leather chair, her feet up on the footstool and Carly turning in a circle before plopping on her lap.

It only took another moment to pour them both glasses of the wine—a mid-range Chianti, nothing fancy—and Q could finally collapse in the other chair. Moneypenny tucked her feet up under her, cradling her wine globe in one hand, eyes fixed on Q. “So it sounds like you’ve had an eventful day,” she observed. “Was James’ tantrum earlier about your American boyfriend? He just ran off and left you at Wagamama with no explanation?”

Q made a gagging noise in the back of his throat to hear Moneypenny refer to Neal in such terms, but he sat up a little at her next question. “I don’t really think it’s about Neal, no,” he said slowly. “I mean, not directly. Neal’s—” Q hesitated, a little reluctant to spill the details of Neal’s personal life, but who was Moneypenny going to tell? “Neal’s very much in love with the Burkes, and James was actually the first to spot that, so I don’t think that’s really what’s going on here. That’s strictly off the record, by the way,” he added warningly.

Moneypenny gave him a disparaging look at that last comment, and Q supposed he should have known better than to lecture one of the top agents in Her Majesty’s Secret Service about secrecy when needed. He gave her a bashful smile, and she waved her hand and sipped her wine by way of moving on. “Right, so that makes his _abandoning you_ even less reasonable,” she said disapprovingly.

“Moneypants,” sighed Q.

“No, no, I know, alright? You know I like James, he’s been good to you, much better than I would ever have given him credit. But that’s shit, isn’t it? Just ditching you like that?”

Q bit his lip. “I think,” he said after a moment, “that he’s… got something on his mind, is all. I don’t love that he ran off either, but—”

“If he tries to break up with you, I’ll break his kneecaps,” Moneypenny said.

"I don't think that's it," Q said, almost automatically, and then paused. He took a deep breath, then let it out in a long sigh. “I checked everyone’s GPS info today,” he said, reluctantly. “After James left us at Wagamama, he... took a car to Putney Vale Cemetery.” He watched Moneypenny’s face for her reaction, knowing that he wouldn’t have to spell it out for her further than that.

He was right. “Oh,” she said. Her eyes went wide, and a moment later she said again, “ _Oh._ ”

“I admit that I don’t really know... what prompted it,” Q said, after several seconds of silence wherein neither of them could think of anything more useful to say. “I know they were close, but.” 

“I don’t fully understand what their relationship entailed, either,” Moneypenny admitted, and Q nodded, somehow gratified by that. 

“I wish he would tell me,” Q said, some heat creeping into his voice, and then he sighed again. “Regardless, I don’t think it really heralds an impending break-up.”

“No,” said Moneypenny; she was staring at a spot on the wall, remembering something Q wasn’t privy to. “I would have guessed quite the opposite, in fact.” 

“Mmm.” Q slumped a little lower on the couch, wine globe cradled in one hand. He had to agree with Moneypants; visiting the grave of his former mentor didn’t exactly scream ‘impending disengagement from committed relationship,’ but for the life of him Q could not think why James had gone off on such a strange, dark road after their light-hearted morning. 

"Well, you know where I am if any kneecaps must be broken," Moneypenny said, breaking his train of thought, though she still sounded a bit doubtful herself.

“Well, whatever’s on his mind, I don’t think he’d have picked me up in front of friends in the expensive car I gave him as an I-love-you present if he was actually considering a break-up. Nor would he have announced that fact to everyone present,” Q pointed out. Just saying it out loud made him feel a bit better.

“Touche,” Moneypenny said reluctantly. “Alright, you’re the better judge, I guess. He’d better not drag this out, whatever it is.”

“Now on that we are perfectly agreed,” said Q with some heat, and they leaned over to clink their wine glasses together before drinking simultaneously. The wine was surprisingly good, Q realized; he’d never have the palate that James (and apparently Neal and El) did, but James had taken great pains over the past few months to introduce Q to some particularly fine bottles of wine, and apparently the experience was paying off.

“So I got my pilot’s license updated,” Moneypenny said, as they leaned back. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you out for a spin in the Cessna?”

“Oh my god, Moneypants, _no_ ,” Q groaned. “You know how I feel about planes.”

“Come on, it’ll be fine, darling, you’re really over-reacting here—”

“I don’t do flying, you _know_ that, and me and little planes get on especially poorly, and vomiting everywhere is really not cute, even on me, so let’s just not and say we did, okay?” Moneypenny was laughing by the time Q got to the end of his miniature rant, and Q huffed, knowing when he was being baited. “You’re such a wretched tart sometimes,” he grumbled.

“I still think skydiving would be good for your soul,” she said good-naturedly, and Q shuddered and took another big swallow of wine.

They moved onto other subjects then, Moneypenny telling him all about how she’d lapped her instructor soundly during her flight test, and then a few non-classified details of her most recent out-of-the-country trip for M. Q sat back and listened, sipping his wine and petting his contentedly-purring cat, feeling the tension inside him slowly unwinding. He wasn’t sad to have the conversation steered elsewhere, all things considered. He’d had more than enough of his own drama for one day.

* * * * *

MI5 found a new hotel suite for Peter and company fairly soon after they expressed a need, in a newer hotel with more security features, but they stayed at headquarters, sorting through security footage—both of the break-in at the hotel and of the museums—until late. Elizabeth checked in around seven-thirty, but they were nowhere near done, so she and Bond went to a show.

Peter felt a stab of guilt that he probably should be escorting his own wife to the show, but he covered it by saying to Q, "Sorry my wife commandeered your partner for the evening."

Q shrugged. "I'm surprised he didn't offer to take her to the ballet. He likes it. I don't."

"Philistine," Neal muttered under his breath. There was a thump as Q kicked Neal under the table (judging from the way Neal jumped and then glared at Q’s innocent expression). Peter watched them fondly for a moment and then returned resignedly to his pile of files.

They dragged their bags to the new hotel—two miles away from the first and with four guards in front instead of two—at about a quarter to eleven; Peter was hanging up his suits when he heard Elizabeth come in, and went out to the main room to see the door just closing behind Bond. "Hi, El," he said, and kissed her on the cheek. "Did you have a nice evening?"

“It was lovely,” she said with a smile, leaning in to return his kiss and then staying there, pressed up against him. “Mr. Bond is a very charming dinner date and very definitely not my type. I prefer my men a little less…” She searched for a word; Peter could practically feel the tiredness radiating off her. “Jagged,” she finished, and raised her eyebrows at him. “What about you? Did you guys find what you were looking for?”

Peter sighed. "Yes and no," he said. "Yes, we found a couple of clear shots of the intruder's face, and yes, we've got a pretty good description, but no, we didn't get any fingerprints, DNA samples, or any hits off of any facial-recognition software." He figured that the hotel room was El's as well, so she could know that much. "We've got her picture out to the local police and someone was going around the place where Agent Moneypenny lost her, but nothing yet."

El nodded. "So about what you'd expect, I guess."

"Yeah," he said. "Unfortunately. I didn't hang your dresses up yet," he added. "I was afraid I'd mess them up. Do you want to—" He gestured at the door.

"Yes, please," she said, and preceded him into their new hotel room. The suite wasn't that different from the old one—the layout and colors were similar, but this one didn't have a conference table. Instead, the rooms had small desks and chairs, and Peter sat in the chair and watched his wife unpack.

“So,” El said, after she’d hung up all of her dresses and was in the process of removing her jewelry. “When we were at the gallery, and you and Neal had a little—quality time in a closet.” She tried for a wide-eyed poker face, and it lasted about five seconds before she ruined it with a giggle. Peter rolled his eyes, and she started laughing, sitting down on the edge of the bed as she grinned at him. “It was right out of a romantic comedy, Peter,” she said.

“I know, I know,” he sighed, “but what else was I supposed to do? He was freaking out, you saw it—”

“I did, though not soon enough,” she admitted.

“Me either,” he grumbled, and she waved her hand.

“So?” she demanded. “How’d it go? Please tell me he’s a good kisser when he’s more awake, or I am going to be severely disappointed.”

"Oh, yeah, he's a good kisser," Peter said. "No disappointment there."

"And?" El said, when he didn't go on.

"All we did was kiss, El," he said, a little irritably. "Maybe a little bit of groping, I don't really remember." Well, okay, he did, but he wouldn't have characterized it as anything but a kiss.

She sighed and turned to him. "No, what did you _say_. You glossed it earlier—apparently he thought you didn't know that I'd kissed him, or something—but I'd like details now."

"Oh," he said. "Ah. Well. Not much more than I said—he thought I'd be mad, to the point where I think he was actively afraid of being in a small space with me. So I told him I was awake when you kissed him, and then I kissed him. And he kissed me back." He stopped, feeling uncomfortably junior-high-ish about the phrasing, but how else was he supposed to say it?

El sighed; she sounded happy, which was good. "Unzip me?" she asked, turning around and lifting up her hair, and he complied. "Then what?"

"Pretty sure I already told you," he said. "He asked if we could not do this in a broom closet, I agreed, and I said he should come talk to us later."

El nodded, slipping the dress off of her shoulders; Peter watched, because she was his wife and he could do things like that. "So we're waiting for him," she said.

"Yeah," he said, and watched her step out of the royal-blue fabric and hang the dress up on a free hanger.

"Do you think he'll come tonight?" she asked, turning around and stepping out of her slip.

He sat on the end of the bed and crossed his legs to untie a shoe, still watching her undress. "I don't know, El," he said. "It was a long day; lots of things happened. He spent a large portion of the day panicking, and I'm sure he's got things to think through before he makes any decisions. I'd be surprised if he did, really."

El unhooked her bra, and Peter briefly lost his train of thought. Good God, she was beautiful. Anyway. Uh. Where had he been? Oh, right, Neal. "I wish he would, though."

"Me too," El said; she pulled on a t-shirt and pajama pants and went into the bathroom to wash her face. It occurred to him that if she was getting ready for bed then he probably should, too, and he pulled off his shoes and started loosening his tie.

"I want to—" he said, and then stopped.

"Want to what?" El said, poking her head out of the bathroom.

"Make sure he's okay," he said, and her face softened.

"Oh, Peter. Me too."

He stripped down to underwear, just to see El's face light up when he went in to brush his teeth and yeah, it was a little bit satisfying—no, a lot satisfying—that she still looked at him like that after, well, being around both Neal and Bond, in addition to eleven and change years of marriage. (Eleven years, five months, two weeks and . . . a day, actually, if one wanted to be precise. Wait, maybe two days. He wasn't quite sure what day it actually was today. Thursday, maybe?)

When he got done in the bathroom, she was already in bed, the covers turned down, sitting up and reading her book, but she put the marker in when she saw him. He pulled on a t-shirt and joined her. "How are you doing?" he asked. "I'm sorry that I haven't gotten to see much of you. I think we all expected this to be much less busy."

El smiled. "It's not even remotely your fault, or Neal's, or even Jack's, for that matter. Don't worry."

"You are way too good for me," he said.

"I really am," she said, grinning, and leaned over to kiss him. It turned heated for a moment, and Peter thought about it, thought about making love to her; God knew he wanted to, but it was late, and if Neal did want to come over it would be a little off-putting, he thought. So even as he felt El's reluctance, he slowed down, backed off, and finally just pulled her against him.

He wanted to stay awake, but he was sleepy, and he started to drift off, but awakened some time later when El said, "He's not coming tonight is he." It wasn't really a question, unfortunately.

"What makes you say that?" he said, a little gravelly with sleep, and swallowed.

"It's past midnight," she said. "I've been here for an hour, and your phone has been entirely silent."

"Hm," he said. He got up, opened the door to the room a crack, and looked across the way at Neal's door.

Dark. No light shining under it. He was asleep, or at least pretending to be. Peter closed the door gently, got back into bed, and turned his bedside lamp off. "His room's dark. He's not coming tonight."

El let out a shuddery sigh, and he wrapped his arms around her. "I know," he said. "Me too."

* * * * *

There was an elephant running around the haunted house, which would be strange enough as it is, but then the elephant opened its mouth and _chirped_ , and Q stopped dead in his tracks. Of course, the elephant kept running at him, so he started running again, and then the elephant chirped again—and that chirping noise was familiar.

Oh, right, it was his text-message noise. Which meant he was dreaming—

—and then, all of sudden, he wasn't dreaming, but he wasn't awake, either; he was just coherent enough to know that someone, someone warm who smelled _really_ good, was climbing into bed with him. Another part of his brain, one that didn't deal with numbers and facts so much, recognized the someone as _James_ , and he sighed.

Q heard a chuckle, as if from a distance; James' voice said, "Go back to sleep, Q." No, that wasn't right. He didn't want to go back to sleep, at least not before he'd—Ahhh. There was James's mouth, and _oh_ , he tasted good as well; he'd brushed his teeth, obviously, but he still tasted like himself and he smelled like Q’s favorite cologne of his, woodsy and masculine.

And now Q was awake, or at least awake enough to be turned on, _God_ , so turned on. He slid a hand under the sheets, found James' skin, hot under his fingers.

James was grinning under his mouth, and not kissing him back nearly as intently as Q wanted. “James,” he complained (whined, an ungenerous person might have said), and then James was laughing into Q’s kisses even as he rolled Q gently onto his back and crawled on top of him. “Oh, James,” Q said breathlessly, warm with sleep and arousal and the pleasure of James’ body pressing against his. A stray thought welled up: he was glad he’d brushed his teeth before crawling into bed, even though he’d planned to stay up and read till James got home.

“And here I thought you’d be tired,” James murmured.

“You give me energy,” Q told him, and kissed him to prove it, sliding a hand up James’ spine. Q tilted his face up and James kissed him harder, exactly like he wanted. Q wrapped his arms around James’ sturdy shoulders, cradling the back of his head in one palm, his cock stiffening eagerly against the loose fabric of his pajama bottoms. “Mmm, when did you put on cologne?”

A chirp from his phone sounded again, and Q cursed and batted at James impatiently, fumbling to find his phone in the dark. “Sorry,” said James, not sounding particularly sorry, “that’ll just be my text telling you I’m headed home.” James sat up slightly, and Q felt James take the phone from him and flip it open to silence the notification.

“As for the cologne,” James murmured, and Q shivered pleasantly at the way his voice had gone dark and rough with renewed interest, “I keep a bottle in the glove-box of the Aston Martin, as you know quite well. I put some on before the show I took Mrs. Burke to.”

"Mmm, how was that?" Q wasn't jealous; he wondered if he should have been, and realized he was a _little_ jealous, if only that he would have liked to be at a show with a pleasant companion rather than having to work. But then again, he’d chosen this life.

"Very nice," James said, and nuzzled along his collarbone. "Would you like to talk about Elizabeth and the show, or would you like to . . .?"

"Let's go with the second," Q said, and buried his fingers in James' short hair. They could talk afterward—not necessarily about the show, but definitely about why he went to visit Mawdsley; Q was willing to wait, knowing at least where James had been. And oh, _God_ , James smelled so good, the scent of the cologne faded just enough to mix with his natural scent and musk and possibly a little sweat . . .

Basically, he smelled like sex in a jar, and if Q'd been a little more awake, he probably would have licked him head to toe. As it was, he got a hand under the waistband of James' pajama bottoms and grabbed a palmful of double-oh arse.

“Mmm, why can’t I always get such a pleasant greeting upon returning to you,” James rumbled. He nosed at Q’s jaw until Q tilted his face back obligingly, exposing his throat to James’ teeth, which grazed teasingly along the underside of Q’s jaw before James bit down on the soft, precious hollow of his throat. Q moaned, pleasure sizzling down his spine, making his toes curl with sudden, jagged lust.

“Come into the office half-naked and smelling like that and you might just get what you want,” Q managed belatedly. James just laughed against his neck, and for several minutes they did little more but kiss and grind languidly against each other. It was easier than he expected to let go of his hurt at James, to just let deeper parts of his brain take control, the parts that responded with nothing but pure _want_ at the scent and feel of James on top of him in bed. In the face of that, Q couldn’t summon up the energy to be mad, especially when James’ hands were so skillfully divesting him of his clothes and what few brain-cells remained that weren’t clouded with sleep.

James had always been good at melting Q into a puddle on whatever surface they happened to be kissing against, ever since the very first time James took him home, but since then practice and due diligence had lent Q the same familiarity and skill with James’ body, so now he knew most, if perhaps not all, of the things that James liked best.

He knew that James’ ribs were sensitive, his earlobes more so; he unexpectedly liked having the insides of his elbows licked, which he was so self-conscious about that Q could barely conceal his delight. He knew that nothing went straight to James’ libido like having his fingers sucked, but he _also_ liked having his nipples sucked, something Q took shameless advantage of far too often. (James paid him back, of course—with interest.)

But by far the most gratifying thing that Q had discovered about having James Bond as a lover was how magnificently tender he could be, and his transcendent delight in skin-to-skin contact. As often as not, it was Q throwing James off him in the middle of the night and not the other way around, and so tonight, Q was somehow not at all surprised when they wound up naked and lying on their sides in bed, the covers rucked up around their hips, James spooning him from behind, an arm lashed securely around Q’s waist.

Q groaned and pushed back against James as best he could, the bit of sweat they'd managed to work up making James' cock slide against his arse and lower back with enough friction to tease. He could probably get James off that way; they'd done it before, either with James' hand on Q's cock or with a blow job afterward, but he really didn't want that right now.

Although if James kept biting _just_ there on his neck, he might have changed his mind. Q dug his nails into James' arm and reached down, rubbing a bare foot against James', distracted for a moment by the intimacy of it, and then hooked his foot around James' calf and pulled, or tried to. James resisted, of course, resulting in more friction and the feel of James' cock getting even harder against him, which would hopefully net Q the result he wanted.

Not that he didn't love having James wrapped around him, feeling the press of heavy muscle against his back; not that he didn't love slow, sleepy sex, or sex in any possible way he could get it from James. But it had been _days_ and he wanted to move things along a bit. Maybe.

"Shh," came over his ear. "Patience, Q." James let go of his waist, trailing his hand from the hollow of Q’s throat down his chest to his navel, slowly, dragging the calluses on his fingers over every inch between.

“Says the man who kept me waiting till past midnight,” Q grumbled, arching into James’ hand, eyelids fluttering as James’ fingers drifted over the jut of his hipbone, fingernails digging in slightly before skating further downward. James’ breath was hot his ear; Q shut his eyes, biting his lip as James brushed his fingertips lightly over Q’s erection. “God, you are such a tease… Ah!” Q gasped, hips jerking as James bit down on the soft shell of his ear.

“I like it when you’re desperate,” James murmured.

“Prat,” Q muttered.

“Now, now.” James’ other hand mapped the underside of Q’s jaw, trained killer’s fingers tracing Q’s Adam’s apple, James’ thumb digging in just under where Q’s jaw hinged at the side of his mouth. His other hand wrapped firmly around Q’s prick, stroking it once from root to tip, and Q let out a rough exhalation, reaching back around to cup the back of James’ skull in one of his hands, aching for more.

"I'm desperate _now,_ " Q whined, his voice breaking slightly with want, but James was merciless, dropping a hand down to cup his balls, making Q gasp. 

"Not as desperate as I know I can make you," James said, breath warm against his ear.

He made good on that threat immediately, reducing Q to a begging, squirming mess by sinking his teeth into the place where Q’s neck met his shoulder. Q moaned, an electric shock spiking in his stomach as James bit and sucked at his skin hard enough to leave a mark, one hand gently rolling Q’s balls in his palm while the other drew soft patterns below Q’s ear.

Q wanted a dozen different things, wanted to touch James, bite him, kiss him, ride him till they were both trembling and exhausted, but right now James had Q pinned and at his mercy. James could do nearly anything to him, and he couldn't do anything about it, which—Q shuddered, head to toe, mind stuttering as it reached its inevitable conclusion, going hazy; he felt himself suddenly relax, limp against James, as if he'd had an orgasm. He hadn't, though; he was just—accepting.

James noticed immediately. His hands stilled, and he tucked his nose against Q’s ear. “Alright, Q?” he asked.

Q sighed, nodding slightly, reaching up to cover James’ hand at his throat with his own. “Yes,” he said, feeling a bit distant even as he said it, but somehow also buoyant, and so warm. “Yes, I’m fine, more than fine, I’m—” He fumbled for the word, even as he reached down to press his palm to James’ arse. “I’m all yours,” he finished, which was about as close as he was going to get.

James exhaled, a hot blast of air against Q’s neck. The hand against Q’s throat tightened, fingers pressing momentarily over his windpipe, and though the pressure was by no means enough to cut off his air, it sent Q suddenly light-headed. “Yes,” James breathed, a roughness in his voice that had Q shuddering again, responding instinctively to its darkness though the shade of its meaning was lost on him. “Yes, god, yes.”

“Oh, please, James…” Oh, yes, he was begging now, though he didn’t know for what.

And then James rolled away from him, for just a moment, and came back, his fingers coated in lube, and _yes_ , that was exactly what Q had been begging for, pressure and sensation and the sweet promise of being _filled_. All he could do was hold on, cling to James' other hand, wrap his fingers in the blankets and squeeze as James prepped him, stroking inside with one finger, and then two, and then a change of angle that meant rough fingertips dragging oh-so-slowly against his prostate.

It was gentle enough that he didn't jerk, but he wasn't entirely sure that he could in his current state, and he certainly didn't care; each new sensation was a wash of color over his mind, and he just let it come, let James do what he would with his fingers and his mouth again on Q's neck. If Q concentrated he could hear James saying, voice low and dark, "Yes, you're mine, aren't you," in between kisses and bites, but it was as if the words were intended for his own ears, not Q's.

Q sucked in a long breath, as if it cost him a significant amount of effort—it didn't, although in a way it felt like it did—and realized he'd been begging this entire time, more variations on "Please, James, yes, God!" It wasn't surprising, but behind him, James was getting more intense, twisting his fingers inside Q, clearly intent on marking up all of Q’s neck.

And he was _ready_ , right now; had to have James inside him, as impossibly close as he could get immediately.

“Oh please,” he said for the nth time that night, ragged now with eagerness and not caring in the slightest. “Please, please…” And then James was pulling his fingers out and the fat, slicked head of James’ cock was pressing against his hole, pressing into him, and Q tipped his head back onto James’ shoulder with a wrecked moan, his mouth falling open.

“That’s it,” James said, a hand on Q’s hip, holding him still as James pushed in, “open up for me, darling, let me in.” Q’s response was a wet noise, reaching blindly for the bulk of James’ arm to hold on to. James caught Q’s face in his other hand, Q’s chin between a thumb and two fingers, and he turned Q to face him, kissing him like he was drowning as he buried himself fully in Q’s body, filling him full just like Q had been craving.

He lost track of time after that, aware of nothing but James' cock, the rhythm of James' body rocking against his, pushing (it felt like) farther in with every stroke, so deep and perfect and _right_. Somewhere on the edge of his consciousness he did feel it when James' hand on his chin let him go and wrapped around his cock; the motions of James' hips made him thrust into James' hand, and _oh_ , that made everything better, brighter, whiter around the edges, until he felt James' muscles tense in a way that meant that he was getting close. Q felt himself tip forward until he was half on his side, half on his stomach, James' hand still on him, but James' body more over him than behind him, and his thrusts got more forceful.

He was almost gone, and he could tell James was nearly there too, but he just needed something more, that push over the edge. “James,” he pleaded, half-muffled by the pillow, “I’m so, I’m, I need, _please_ —” He didn’t know what, or how to ask for it, words were getting harder and harder to force out.

James heard him anyway. “ _Yes_ , Q,” he bit out, harsh against Q’s throat, “come now, come for me right now—” And he snapped his hips against Q’s ass, thrusting deep inside him, his hand twisting cruelly on Q’s prick, and Q’s orgasm hit him immediately, hard and bright and all at once. He cried out, the air stopping in his throat for a moment as he clenched around James’ cock, wound so tight he nearly passed out for several perfect seconds.

But he didn't; James' thrusts kept him afloat, and he was profoundly glad of that, as otherwise he would have missed James' rhythm faltering with a full-body stutter. One last deep, hot push laid Q flat out on his stomach, James' body blanketing his even as he arched his neck and came. "Oh, Christ, Q."

Q couldn't move; didn't want to, except he did, wanted to reach out for James in some way. He managed to twitch his fingers, and James saw, or maybe felt, and covered them with his own, with a fond chuckle into his shoulder. "Indeed," James said, and how he was so coherent after an orgasm was something Q would never be able to comprehend.

James licked Q's shoulder as he pulled out, and Q realized that he hadn't worn a condom; not unusual, as they'd largely dispensed with them except when needed for ease of cleanup a couple months ago, but still. It meant he'd need to get up to clean himself, and he didn't want to. He sighed against the pillow. Oh well.

His eyelids started to droop, and he let them, just for a moment, feeling James' fingers on his arse, so soothing. “I love you,” he murmured, without thinking about it. James’ hand stilled, and then James re-settled on top of him, James’ face against Q’s neck. It would be disgusting if they stayed here like this more than a few minutes. Q found he did not particularly care.

“I love you, too,” said James, soft and barely-there, right into his ear. Q turned his face towards James’, and James kissed him, as gentle now as he’d been rough moments ago, and it was the gentleness that burned Q’s eyes, made him blink a little too rapidly.

If James saw, he gave no sign, or perhaps he just didn’t care. There would be plenty of time for other things in the morning, but for now, this was all Q needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The thus-far nameless intruder, played by the lovely [Michelle Yeoh](http://www.biography.com/imported/images/Biography/Images/Profiles/Y/Michelle-Yeoh-240963-1-402.jpg). Valpolicella is a [classic Italian wine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valpolicella). And the legendary [Aston Martin DB5](http://i.imgur.com/KQEeYkg.jpg).


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which new information is learned that proves things worse instead of better.

After entirely too many hours spent tossing, turning, and checking the time, the next morning finally arrived. Peter stumbled out of bed and into the main room, mindlessly seeking the source of the amazing coffee smell, only to stop short when he saw Neal, Q, Agent Moneypenny, Jack, and Diana all sitting or standing around the coffee table, looking at Q's laptop. Bond was nearby, pouring coffee from a carafe; he held the mug out to Peter, who took it gratefully.

"Good morning, boss," Diana said. "We've got news. Agent Malhotra's on his way over."

"Oh," Peter said, and he really wasn't quite awake enough for this, but he shook his head quickly, and said, "What happened?"

"I've got something on the disruption of Neal's tracker," Q said.

"And Mozzie called; we're setting up another conference call for a few minutes from now," Neal added.

"Good," Peter said, and took a sip of his coffee, which was just a little too hot to drink, but he really needed the caffeine. "But first things first: are there scones?"

Q looked up with a faint smile from his computer. “As if we would bring coffee and tea but not scones,” he said, and gestured at the table to one side of the room, on which sat two bags from A Piece of Cake. “There’s some sweeter fare, as well.” Peter investigated, discovering an assortment of the bakery masterpieces he already knew he’d miss after going back to New York, plus a few bear claws and muffins for good measure.

Good. All good. Which meant the fact that Peter was still in his pajama bottoms and t-shirt was more than a little not good. “Give me ten minutes,” he said, and vanished back into the bedroom (but not without his coffee and a scone for El).

El lifted her head minutely as he shut the door behind him, peering at him from the mess of blankets and pillows. “What’s going on?” she asked, sounding as tired as Peter still felt. Neither of them had slept well, not with Neal so close and yet still so beyond their reach.

“More case work,” he said, setting a scone for her in a wrapper on the bedside table. “Sorry.”

She made a noise in her throat like Peter had just told her he wanted to fry her some slugs for breakfast, and dropped her head back to the pillows, yanking the covers up over her head. “Don’t be, I’ll just sleep,” wafted out from the bed sheets. Peter grinned and headed for a shower. If only they were all that lucky.

When he got out of the bathroom, El's head was buried under the covers, but half the scone was gone. He smiled to himself, patted the lump that was his wife, and traded his towel for his standard blue suit and white shirt, leaving the jacket on his arm and the tie loose around his neck.

He grabbed his coffee and left their room quietly, pulling the door shut behind him, and picked up a scone before rejoining the others. Agent Malhotra had arrived, apparently, and although it was clear they were waiting for Peter, it was all of a quarter past eight in the morning and he didn't really care. "So," he said, after swallowing a bite of what tasted like a chocolate-chip scone (with maybe a hint of coconut and espresso). "What's happened since last night?"

"Mozzie's calling in about fifteen minutes," Neal said. "He supposedly has information on the provenance of the paintings." On first glance, Neal looked as well-rested as ever, but Peter took a closer look and yes, there were dark circles under his eyes, faint but noticeable, and he looked a little less crisp around the edges—his hair wasn't quite behaving, and he was neither clean-shaven nor possessed of just the right amount of stubble. _Good_ , Peter thought, a bit vindictively, and then felt bad about it, but some portion of him was happy to know that he and El weren't the only ones losing sleep over this.

“Right,” said Peter, glancing around at the expectant faces. “Who wants to go first?”

“I will,” said Malhotra, with a look at Q for permission. Q waved a hand at him vaguely to continue. “We may have got something from the security tapes at Tate Britain.”

“It’s about time,” said Diana. She was perched against one of the easy chairs, looking as put-together and alert as Peter wished he felt, sipping a cup of the excellent coffee Bond and Q had brought along.

“No kidding,” said Malhotra. “There’s a discrepancy on one of the security feeds—just a split-second jump, but we’ve run it through a computer program that Q designed for us to analyze the frames, and it looks like someone looped security footage from 2:33 am to just after 3:00 am, in every room where a painting was stolen. The real footage was replaced with the fake, and the sync was so good we almost didn’t catch it.”

“Well that at least explains how they pulled it off,” Neal mused. “But how’d they get their hands on the security cameras in the first place?”

“Sounds like an inside job,” said Peter. Malhotra nodded. “Anything new turn up with any of our interviews?”

“Not yet,” said Malhotra. “But there’s still one person we’re waiting to interview, and guess what shift he works at the Tate Britain.”

Peter and Diana exchanged a glance. “The guy in the hospital,” said Peter, and Malhotra nodded. “Well, isn’t that convenient.”

“’Weird’ is the word I would have used, actually,” said Jack. “Doesn’t he have the flu, or something?”

Malhotra nodded. "Normally we'd go in and interview him anyway, but his doctor said he's drifting in and out of consciousness."

Jack rolled his eyes. "A little too convenient."

Malhotra shrugged. "Nonetheless, it's a lead. I'll check on his status once we finish this meeting. I should also add that we have had no more information on the woman who broke into the rooms, despite the Met canvassing the area with a photograph, and neither Interpol nor any of the American agencies have gotten back to me yet. I don't know if any of you can hurry that process up a bit?"

"I'll see what I can do," Peter said, pulling out his phone to make a note to email Jones shortly, "but the time difference may be what's causing the problem."

"Same," Jack said, "but I'll light a fire." Diana nodded as well.

"Thank you," Malhotra said. "That's all I have at the moment. Q, I believe you had more information for us on the tracker?"

Q nodded and turned his laptop toward the others. "I don't know how many of you code, but these two lines here—" He jabbed his finger at the screen. "—are not in the original code. I believe that when Neal's tracker went dark a couple days ago, the point was to slip these lines in. These should allow for remote access to the tracker, blocking mine in the process."

Neal’s eyebrows went up, and he cast a look at Peter before he could stop himself (Peter thought). At the consternation on the assembled faces, Q permitted himself a small but extremely smug grin. “Please,” he said lightly. “As if I’m not up to the task of neutralizing something so simple. Finding it was the difficult part. I left them in just in case the original hacker checks, but I’ve already added a bypass that leaves them non-functional, and updated the remainder of the program with added encryption. In addition, if anyone attempts to alter or access the code aside from myself, I’ll receive an immediate notification. As will you, Agent Burke.”

“So the hack won’t happen again, then,” said Peter, and Q nodded. “Good. That just leaves us with the disturbing question of who even knew about Neal’s nanotracker in the first place.”

"Well, I should think it obvious that we were going to place a tracker on Neal as soon as he came here—no offense meant," Q added.

"None taken," Neal said, only a little bitterly.

"So from there, it was merely a matter of hacking into MI5 or MI6 to figure out what sort of tracker." Q stopped and raised an eyebrow at Malhotra, who gave him an impassive stare back.

"You designed the protocols for MI5 as well as MI6," Malhotra said. "No matter where it was hacked, it is on your head, not mine."

"Except I would guess you checked your work email on your mobile," Q said. "How secure is your mobile?"

"MI5 issue," Malhotra said, and a person less adept than Peter at spotting discomfort would have bought the poker face, but the twitching of Malhotra’s fingers gave him away.

Q shook his head, but dropped the subject. Behind him, Peter could see Bond smirking. Probably enjoying the fact that Q was giving someone else a hard time about tech aside from him, unless Peter missed his guess. "Nonetheless,” said Q, “I've fixed the problem, and I've got a trace running."

Peter nodded. "Good."

A chime rang from Q’s laptop then, and Q straightened, fingers flying across the keyboard. “Your friend is ringing us, Neal,” he said calmly, and picked up the laptop to walk across the room to the table against the far wall. “I assume he’s requesting the same procedure as last time?”

“Of course,” said Neal, and Peter couldn’t suppress a small grin at the collective grumble that went up from Malhotra, Bond, and Jack. The three agents went to seat themselves on the couch on the opposite end of the room from the wall the computer was now facing. “Hey, Dante,” said Neal, leaning over to peer past Q’s shoulder. Q was bent over the desk, face intent as he set up the numerous encryption protocols he’d used last time.

“Hello, Neal,” said the voice from the computer, fuzzy and distorted. “I trust it’s a good morning on your end?”

“More or less,” said Neal, grinning for real now. "I suppose it's pleasantly dark over where you are?"

"You have no idea where I am," Mozzie said, "but yes, it is not standard business hours. Who else is there?"

"Same as last time: Q, Peter, Diana, and I are here—wave, people—and the ones you don't like are exiled to the other side of the room."

Someone in the peanut gallery made a disgusted noise, but Peter ignored it.

"Where's Mrs. Suit?" Mozzie asked, plainly suspicious.

"Still asleep," Peter said. "I'll tell her you said hi."

"You do that," Mozzie said. "So, Neal, your alleged paintings."

"Yeah, about those," Neal said. "What do you have for us?"

"I couldn't find owners for all of them, but the first ten on the list—in the last four years, they'd all been purchased by a shell corporation owned by a Bruce Wayne."

"Batman?" Peter said. "Batman bought your pictures?"

"Yeah, it's the fakest name in all of Fake Namington," Mozzie said, "which is why I obviously dug a layer further down and found another shell corporation owned by another shell corporation, et cetera, until I got to an Alastair Thompson, date of birth 01/24/1953, and you're on your own for the rest of the research as to who he is."

“I’ve heard that name before,” said Bond, speaking up for the first time in almost twenty minutes. Peter looked over to see a faint frown creasing Bond’s face. “I wish I could say I knew where.”

“You’ve shot at a lot of people over the years, 007,” said Q mildly, but there was no humor in Q’s voice, his eyes already distant; Peter was willing to bet the cost of his plane ticket back to the States that Q would be digging for info on that name himself the moment he got the time.

“I’ll get the name run through our database,” Peter said to Malhotra, who nodded. He already had his phone out and was doubtless putting in a similar request. Every little bit would help.

“Right,” said Neal. “What about the picture I emailed to you?” Peter frowned at the side of Neal’s head, but Neal conveniently ignored him.

"The tall, dark-haired lady? I didn't recognize her, but I've got some, uh, inquiries in."

Peter's eyes bugged, because clearly, _that's_ what this case needed: tampering from Mozzie. He opened his mouth to say something, but Neal kicked him in the shin.

"Well, if you find anything out, tell us when you can," Neal said, and Peter made a mental note to _wring his neck_ later.

Malhotra's phone beeped in his hands, and the agent stood, walking to the door. "Malhotra here."

"Anything else?" Neal asked Mozzie, and Peter returned his attention to the computer. "Did anyone you talked to know why Thompson is buying my alleged paintings?"

"You've got immunity on creation and original sale, Neal; you can call them your paintings," Diana said from the other side of the table.

"Yeah, because the immunity is totally worth the paper it's written on," Mozzie grumbled under his breath. "No one was willing to say anything, but that doesn't mean they don't have something to say. I'll keep digging, but I doubt I'll find anything."

"That was the hospital," Malhotra said, striding back over to the couch, and everyone looked at him except Mozzie, who was confined to the monitor, obviously. "Finley Mills, the maintenance worker, died about an hour ago. They’re identifying tentative cause of death as cardiac arrest, and it _could_ have been complications from the flu, but it was so abrupt that the doctors suspect an arterial gas embolism—"

“What? What is he talking about?” Mozzie’s voice had gone so shrill that some feedback squealed from Q’s laptop’s monitors, and both Peter and Neal winced. “Who died of flu?”

“No one, Mr. Haversham,” said Peter hastily, before Neal could tell yet more sensitive details to people who were so far from having security clearance they might as well be in another dimension. It was the wrong thing to say.

“Oh! Oh, because that’s _so_ reassuring, Suit, great job on the conspiracy cover-up there.” Peter rubbed his hand across his face and glanced over at Diana, who looked frankly amused. “Neal you really need to get out of there, if there’s a flu outbreak I can’t help you from here—you know there were two different research centers who developed a super-contagious version of H1N1 in the past twelve months, there have been groups working on mutating the Spanish flu—”

“Dante,” exclaimed Neal, “It’s fine, okay? It’s really fine.”

“IT’S NOT FINE!” shrieked Mozzie, and everyone winced. “Do you know how _dangerous_ the Spanish flu is? It killed more people than World War One! It kills people our age, Neal, healthy people!”

“That was a hundred years ago,” Q put in. “Bit behind if you’re wanting good bioterrorism ploys, I’m afraid.”

"Q, you have _no_ idea what bioterrorists are doing these days!" On the screen, Mozzie was scrabbling for something out of frame. "Neal, Suit, Lady Suit, Mrs. Suit, get out of there. There's nothing else you can do."

A second later the connection went dead, and Q shrugged. "That was him, not me," he said.

"I think we got all we needed from Mr. Haversham," Peter said, and Neal's lips twisted to one side as he nodded.

Malhotra was texting on his phone, and he said, "We’re treating the death as suspicious for the time being. I've got a judge signing a warrant to look through Mr. Mills's place right now. We can pick it up on the way, Agent Burke, Agent Berrigan, Agent Pfotenhauer, if any of you would like to join us?"

"I'd like to," Neal said.

"He's done it before," Peter said, with a shrug; he suppressed the instinct that wanted to lock Neal in the hotel room. There shouldn't have been anything dangerous in the maintenance worker's rooms.

"You'll have to follow procedure," Malhotra said, dubious. "Q and Bond, I presume this isn't your interest set."

"It's not," Q said cheerfully, "and I do rather have a day job other than this. So does Bond."

"Yes," Bond said, "we probably should go."

Malhotra nodded, and then looked at Peter. "Shall we?"

* * * * *

Traffic in London was always chancy, but it seemed that one of them had pissed off the traffic gods particularly badly, because the roundabouts were nearly at a standstill and Q and Bond hit almost every red light possible on their way back to MI6. Q actually considered hacking into the city's system to see if he could fix the lights at the very least, but dismissed that as not worth his time.

Besides, extra time in the car with James was never really a bad thing, even if conversation was confined to times when James' jaw wasn't tight from all the curse words he wanted to spew at fellow drivers. "So, Mr. Haversham's a bit of a character," Q ventured, at one particularly-long traffic light.

James gave a short chuckle. "Have you ever met him?"

"No," Q said. "I'd like to, though. I understand he's a bit infamous, and Neal appears to trust him a lot. Well, a lot for Neal."

"Neal seems to trust the Burkes."

"Yes, well, that's a bit different, isn't it?" Q said.

Conversation stalled for a moment as James maneuvered around a car stopped in the _middle_ of the bloody roundabout, how did _that_ happen, but James actually started it again himself. “Who was it that made him so wary?”

Q glanced at James a moment, slightly startled; he’d been expecting another question, but not that one, for some reason. “His ex’s name was Kate Moreau,” Q said after a moment. “I still don’t really have any details, but… the best that I can make out, Neal’s come to think she never actually cared for him at all and was just using him as a means to other ends. Hard to say now, though, as she died a year or so ago.”

James nodded, eyes still on the road. After a few moments, the congestion ahead of them cleared somewhat, and the car eased forward into traffic again. “Must be difficult to get past something like that,” James observed. His voice was deceptively mild. Q looked at his lap.

“James,” he said hesitantly, after another minute of silence had stretched out between them.

James flicked his eyes over at Q but didn't turn his head, and didn't say anything, and if Q hadn't been looking almost straight at him, he might not have seen it.

Q let another thirty seconds pass before he said, "I looked up everyone’s electronic data last night. To make sure no one else had any bugs." James glanced over at him momentarily, but his face might as well have been carved from marble for all the expression in it. When he got no further response, Q exhaled and said, “Why did you go to Putney Vale cemetery?”

James let out his breath slowly, hissing a little through the back of his throat, and said, "Tonight? After work, maybe over dinner."

Q nodded; he was a little stung, but now that he had a time frame, rather than "soon but not now," he felt a little better. Well, he'd felt a little better after last night's lovemaking, but that was probably mostly because of the obvious reasons.

It was hard, to not be upset at the continual putting-off, especially when James had abandoned him so abruptly in the cafe yesterday. He was glad that James hadn’t denied that he’d been at the cemetery, or been confrontational about Q’s discovery, though there were still so many details that Q needed. But they’d been together for almost six months now; practice made perfect, and while neither of them were very good at this, they were both trying their hardest. Q hadn’t been lying when he’d told Neal that he trusted James, that he thought James would tell him the truth and not sweep the incident under the rug. And Q also thought that Neal was right, that James just needed some time.

Because unlike James, Q had had the benefit of several years of excellent therapy in the wake of the devastating end to his previous relationship. It hadn’t been his idea, of course; the previous M, in her infinite wisdom and impatience with bullshit, had bluntly informed him that if Q wanted the future she was dangling in front of his nose, he would play by her rules and do exactly as she said. Which (in addition to the actual technological contract work Q had done for MI6 before being hired on) had meant lots of therapy, lots of psychiatric evaluation, and lots of work breaking himself of most of the worst of his interpersonal habits. Going from “kept boy of a pair of murderous criminals” to “candidate for future head of Q Branch” had not come overnight.

Q had long since given up the illusion that she’d done it for his benefit. Neal Caffrey might be good at playing the long game, but even he was an amateur alongside Barbara Mawdsley, and Q suspected heavily that she’d intended to recruit him to MI6 from the moment she’d read his desperate email pleading for her help. So she’d given him what he asked for—an escape hatch—and in return demanded that he make himself ready for the burden she’d one day place on his shoulders. The fact that it made him suck less at relationships had been a pleasant by-product, not the end goal.

Not for the first time, he wondered what there had been between Mawdsley and James, the extent of the loss that James had endured at her death. If she’d done so much for Q, who she had barely known, what might she have done for someone she’d worked with so closely?

All of this passed through his mind in less than fifteen seconds from James’ answer to his question. Q gave himself a few scant moments to wallow in frustration, and then he let out a breath, straightened his back, and directed his eyes forward. “You know, what I really need to make next is a Delorean,” he remarked. “Or perhaps just a plow to stick on the front of your car. I wonder how hard that’d be to sneak by accounts for approval.”

"That might be what causes Vicky to break and finally strangle you," James said mildly, "and I'd really hate to have to kill her."

"Right, because she rarely complains about filling in your expense reports for you when you’re too lazy to do it yourself."

"She complains all the _time_ ," James said, "she just keeps doing it anyway."

Q laughed, and James smiled at him, and yes, he could wait until the end of the day.

But it would probably be a long day.

* * * * *

Agent Malhotra drove Peter, Diana, Neal, and Jack over to Mills's apartment building, which was in a rather run-down part of town. Apparently the super would meet them there, along with the Met and other MI5 agents who were armed, just in case of danger. Even though Mills's death had been suspicious, Peter wasn't entirely sure that the armed agents were needed; nonetheless, some weird, profoundly American part of him appreciated the backup.

Mills's apartment was on the third floor; one of the Met officers knocked on the door, wooden with paint peeling around the bottom, and called out, "Police; open the door." When no one answered, and there was no noise from the inside, Malhotra nodded at the super, who found his keyring and opened the door.

The armed officers went first, calling, "Clear!" as they went through rooms. Fortunately, there weren't very many; the door opened into a living room with a dining area at one end and a kitchenette along the wall. Peter could vaguely see through one door into a bathroom and a second into a bedroom.

Well, maybe not literally a bedroom; the couch in the living room was actually a futon and there was a pillow and some balled-up blankets at one end. The kitchenette's sink was full of unwashed dishes and there was a pile of laundry in a suitcase next to the futon, but otherwise very little in the way of things that suggested that someone lived there: no television, no computer, not even a cell phone charger plugged into the wall or a stray paperback.

"Bedroom's empty," said one of the Met officers, pushing back his mask. Peter exchanged a glance with Diana and frowned.

“I don’t know which would be weirder,” Peter remarked, as their assembled crew spread out through the apartment, doing a more thorough examination now that they’d confirmed there was nothing immediately dangerous lurking. “Finding a perfectly normal apartment, or finding this.” He gestured at the sparse, barely-lived in space.

Diana grinned at him. “And here I was thinking that no matter how many times we do this, I’m still always disappointed we don’t get to kick doors down and yell at people,” she said cheerfully, and Peter snorted.

“You watch too much Law and Order.”

“Go big or go home,” she told him.

"The bedroom's not just empty, it's _clean_ ," one of the agents said, and Peter, Diana, and Neal went to stand in the doorway.

It was clean, from bare wooden floors to sparkling windows to an empty closet and unadorned walls—not just tidied, but _scrubbed_ , and recently. Peter could smell the faint odor of lemon overlying bleach, now that he was almost in the room. Someone had been here already today. "Curiouser and curiouser," Neal said, and knelt to look in a corner.

"The ceiling fan," Diana said suddenly.

Peter and Malhotra swiveled to look at her. "The ceiling fan?" They both looked overhead at the fan there.

“Yes,” said Diana, glancing momentarily at Peter in a clear plea for back-up. “If something splattered, it might have hit a high surface and still be there, even though this place has been scoured pretty well.”

"Someone get a chair and check the fan," Malhotra said.

“Got it,” came back the response, which just left Peter looking curiously at Diana.

“So don’t take this the wrong way,” he said after a moment, “because it’s a good call, but how did you think of having him check the ceiling fan?”

Diana’s grin turned a little mischievous. “It was in an X-Files episode,” she said.

“Did you really just use X-Files as precedent for procedure in an investigation?” demanded Neal, and Peter had to laugh.

"You have your art and your wine and your clothes, and I watch terrible television," she said. "Turns out they're _both_ useful."

Neal gave her a grudging nod of acknowledgment, but if he'd been about to say anything it got pre-empted by one of the MI5 agents—the one on the chair, looking at the fan—saying, "Good call, boss; smears of some sort of gel up here."

"Bag it and tag it," Malhotra said, and the agent rolled his eyes.

Neal wandered out of the room while Peter was still shining a flashlight in the corners of the closet, but a couple of minutes later, he heard, "Peter?" from the main living area.

"Did you find something?" Peter said as he stood and strode out of the bedroom.

Neal was standing by the cupboard, a smallish black box in his hands—which were fortunately covered in vinyl gloves. An empty cereal box sat on the counter to his right, its crumpled wax bag of cereal sitting lonely on the shelf beside it, and he said, "I don't know what this is, but can you please tell me it isn't a bomb?"

“….I don’t know,” said Peter after a moment, or started to, anyway, because at the stated question Malhotra appeared in the doorway to peer at the object held out in Neal’s hand.

“It’s not a bomb,” he said almost immediately.

Later—much later, after a week spent in the hospital watching the entirety of Downton Abbey before digging into case files just for a change of pace—Peter would discover that Amit Malhotra was so hilariously overqualified for MI5’s White Collar division that it was a wonder he endured the interference from so many other agencies at all. Malhotra had spent 15 years on the bomb squad for MI6 before opting to transfer to another branch of government, had been sent everywhere from Ireland to Iraq to Cambodia and back again, and he had a knowledge of explosives that would have rivaled the best of Peter’s instructors at Quantico.

But on that day, at that moment, Peter didn’t know and would likely not have cared. He only cared about the way the tension left Neal’s shoulders and face when Malhotra took the unfamiliar box from his hands, turning it over and over, examining it curiously for some key to its nature. “Where’d you find this?” he asked. Neal grinned, a touch sheepishly, Peter thought.

“Bottom of a full box of cereal is a good place to hide small stuff,” Neal said.

“Hide it from whom, that’s the question,” said Malhotra thoughtfully. “We’ll have to send this over to MI6’s headquarters for examination.”

“Not MI5?” Peter asked, eyebrows going up. Either MI5 and MI6 got along a world better than the CIA and the FBI ever would, or he was missing something here.

Malhotra shook his head. “We don’t actually have separate divisions when it comes to R&D,” he said. “Waste of resources. Everything is routed through Q-Branch and the biotech wing at MI6.”

"Oh," Peter said.

"In the meanwhile, was that the only cereal box?" Malhotra said.

Neal nodded. "But there's a box of macaroni and a couple of boxes of cleaning supplies."

"Agent Odili?" Malhotra said, and one of the spare MI5 agents came over and helped them go through the rest of the boxes in the kitchen. They didn't find anything else; Peter wasn't particularly surprised, but thoroughness was definitely a virtue.

"Well," Malhotra said about forty-five minutes later, "I think we've found all we're going to find here. Is there somewhere you wanted to be after this?" he asked Peter.

Peter exchanged a look with Diana, who shrugged. "Back to the hotel is fine," he said, and the rest of the group nodded.

"Keep us posted on the gel and the box?" he said, a little unsure on the protocol, but Malhotra nodded.

A murder, a hidden box, and mysterious gel. So much for a simple art theft.

* * * * *

Q's phone vibrated in his pocket. He thumbed it off, too deeply buried in his code to care at the moment. Reaching out a hand, he snagged his bottle of Q Goo and drank deeply, not pausing in his typing at all. Moments later the mobile vibrated again, and he pulled it out of his pocket and threw it in a drawer. A minute or so later there was a knock at the door of his office, and he looked up, growling, "What."

And immediately felt terrible, because Moneypenny stood there, looking more worried than angry—but only barely. "Q," she said.

"Sorry," he said with a wince. "Um, hello, Moneypants. It's great to see you. How are you?"

"Too little, too late," she said, shaking her head. "I'll let you make it up to me by paying for lunch."

"I can do that," he said. "I mean—" He turned back to the code and winced. "Let me just save this."

Moneypenny coughed half a second later and Q looked at the clock in the corner of his screen—whoops, it had actually been five minutes. He hunched his shoulders guiltily and hit 'save' before locking his computer.

“Must you bring that with you?” said Moneypenny, tugging on her coat as they headed out. Q’s laptop was tucked safely into the messenger bag slung over his shoulder, and was now banging against his hip.

“I’m sorry, have you met me?” Q bumped deliberately into her, and she snorted, giving him a shove back on his own path.

“I have, as a matter of fact.” They passed the lifts and went to the doors to the stairs, Moneypenny’s heels clacking on the stone steps. “You have a cynical candy shell coating your gooey romantic center, but you have a soft spot for hopeless cases and a tendency to forget to eat. Also, the level of technophilia to which you regularly aspire is going to start making James jealous if you don’t get ahold of yourself, just so you know.”

Q’s snort of laughter made him almost miss the next step, and he grabbed for the handrail, clutching at it as though for dear life as he regained his balance. “Don’t even,” he told her warningly, and she just laughed.

They went to the sandwich shop around the corner for lunch, because Q wasn’t feeling up to the Underground at this exact moment. He was partway into his Reuben before Moneypenny said, "So, how are you doing today?"

"I'm fine," Q said, a little confused, and then a moment later realized what she was asking. "Oh. You mean James."

She gave him an eyebrow, because in hindsight, yes, it was rather obvious.

"He got home rather late last night and we didn't exactly have time to chat, but we did, well, _communicate_ —" He coughed delicately, and Moneypenny shook her head. "—and I still don't think that he actually means to break it off with me. He did say he loved me. And then this morning he said he'd tell me after work, so that's where things stand."

Moneypenny nodded slowly. "He was with Mrs. Burke yesterday evening?"

Q nodded. "I guess they saw a show. I forgot to ask which one," he admitted. From his pocket, his mobile beeped at him again, and Q growled under his breath as he dug it out to try to silence it. “Good lord, you didn’t have to send me two messages—”

“I didn’t,” said Moneypenny with an arched eyebrow.

“You—oh.” Q blinked. The other message was from the nanotracker program he’d written. He slid his fingertip across the screen to open it; _Subject 1 biofeedback parameters exceeded._ “Oh for fuck’s sake,” he muttered.

“What is it?” Moneypenny sat up a little straighter, and something about her posture reminded Q abruptly that James wasn’t the only trained killer he went around with.

“It’s just the phone alert from the nanotrackers,” he said, waving his hand vaguely and shoving the mobile back into his coat pocket. “It’s fine, I just have it set to alert me if anything whatsoever changes outside of the original parameters I set.” Moneypenny arched the other eyebrow, and Q pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering why making himself clear was so difficult today. He must need more sleep, or something. “I set parameters for biofeedback and location data,” Q said, by way of further explanation. “It’s telling me my data has changed. Probably my blood pressure from stress.” He made a face.

“Ah.” Moneypenny reached for her water and took a sip. "Is anything going on other than the, ah, situation with James?"

Q shrugged. "I'm head of Q Branch. When is something _not_ going on?"

"Point," she said, "but . . ." She trailed off, looking at him expectantly.

"Really, no more than the usual," he said, trying to be as firm as he could. "How’s your aunt doing, the one you went and visited last month? I imagine she’d be quite pleased with hearing about your pilot’s license achievement.”

“She was,” said Moneypenny, making a pained face, “but it didn’t stop her from segueing directly into asking when I was going to get a ‘real’ job.”

"Oh, not that again."

They rambled on, Q finding himself very grateful to let Moneypenny steer the conversation. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was; he didn’t _feel_ hungry, but as she said, he did sometimes forget to eat and often as not it made him feel pretty wretched before he managed to realize his mistake. Between that and worry over James, he thought he might actually break his tea habit and get coffee on the way back for the greater caffeine boost. So he forced down the rest of his Reuben and snuck some paracetamol out of his computer bag and resigned himself to a rough rest of his afternoon.

He’d catch up on sleep tonight, he promised himself. Or, well, probably a few days from now; there was the resolution of Neal’s case to see to, and they’d need him, he was sure of it. But soon. He’d rest soon.

* * * * *

"But who's feeding your dog?" El's mother asked, not five minutes after her father had already asked, and El sighed and told her the same thing.

"One of Peter's coworkers, Clinton Jones, is staying there to keep an eye on the house and to handle Satchmo. Peter's been emailing him regularly and Satch is fine. I promise."

"Couldn't you have him kenneled? It's not too expensive."

"We could, but this is easier on the dog and Jones doesn't mind. I think he likes having the excuse to leave work on time for a few days." She loved her parents; she really did, but after she and her sister had left the house they'd gotten a little dependent on their dogs and now they were transferring some of it to _her_ dog.

"But what if you have to stay longer?" her mom asked.

The door opened, and Peter came in; he closed it quickly, apparently when he saw that she was on the phone, but not before she saw that the rest of their group was back as well.

"We won't have to do that," El said, "but if we did, we'd just call Jones and make sure he could continue. I don't see any reason why not. In any case, though, Mom, the plane ticket says we're leaving tomorrow and, barring a national disaster, we'll be on that plane."

She saw Peter’s slight wince, out of the corner of her eye, but he said nothing and she saw no reason to amend her statement. “Anyway, Mom, Peter just got back, and I think we’re going to go out and see the Tower of London before we head home, so I should get off the phone and get ready to go. …Uh-huh, I will. Yes, I promise. … I love you too. Bye, Mom.” She hung up, setting the phone down and crossing the room to her husband. “Hi, honey,” she said, and leaned up to steal a kiss. “How’d the law enforcing go this morning?”

Peter grinned at her. “Pretty well,” he said. "We went to the suspect's apartment—he died this morning in the hospital, by the way, and they think it was foul play—and we found a few things, though not as much as we’d like to. Sent everything over to MI6 for further analysis. We won’t know more till it’s back.”

Elizabeth slid her hands along his shoulders, smoothing imaginary wrinkles as she raised her eyebrows at him. “But they want you to stick around?” she asked. She couldn’t keep the exasperation out of her voice, and she sighed before Peter could stutter out a response—an apology, probably. “Do they really need you and Neal, still? This isn’t really technically your case, is it?”

"Technically, no," he admitted, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck, "but it's gotten a lot more complicated than just an art crime and I really don't think that Neal will be allowed to leave until it's over. I mean—" He cut himself off mid-sentence, making a face. "MI5 will never _say_ he's not allowed to leave, but it's probably best for all of us that they don't have to let him go and then ask for him back, only with a bit more bite behind it this time."

"Ahh," El said. "It's just—well, you know. I can miss one weekend of work; I've got enough people for that, but two . . ."

"I know," he said, and the pained look on his face encompassed his knowledge of all the times that she'd had to make sacrifices around her job for his. "You could go home without me. Satchmo would probably appreciate it."

Something in her chest clenched at the thought of flying home without Peter, or more accurately, without Peter _and_ Neal; she couldn't leave them right now. She just couldn't. "Oh, well, Jones is probably spoiling Satch rotten," she said lightly. "Can we—look, let me see what I was supposed to do this weekend, and make a few phone calls." Obviously she'd had the upcoming events all set up well in advance, because of her absence—well, and also her general preference not to leave things to chance—and she _probably_ could leave it all up to her assistants, but she hadn't been planning on it.

Dammit.

"Okay," he said. "It's not because of—"

"It is," she said, "sort of. I don't want to leave the two—the three of us hanging like this. But there are a lot of things to think about." And while she felt rather weird taking a leave of absence for what was essentially her love life, she _did_ , after all, own the business.

“I know, hon,” he said, his voice heavy with guilt. 

That was the thing about Peter; he _did_ know. He didn’t take her for granted, or just assume that her job was less important than his, or that what she wanted came second. They’d had a whole conversation, once (well, for a value of “once” that meant “drawn out over the span of a weekend”) about this exact topic, about the FBI taking precedence over a catering business, but the reason it had been a conversation and not a fight was because, one, she knew what she’d been getting into when she married him, and two, Peter never treated her with less than the utmost respect.

El wrapped her arms around him, and he enveloped her in one of his big, bone-crushing hugs, resting his cheek on the top of her head. “I know it’s not ideal for you to stay,” he murmured, “but I gotta say, I’d be pretty grateful if you did.”

“I know you would be,” she said, her smile hidden in the fleur-de-lis print tie she’d gotten for him two birthdays ago. “I know you don’t want to drag this out either, but…” She sighed. “I think you’re right. About Neal, and the case, and, well, everything.”

“I do alright sometimes,” Peter said, and she could hear the smile in his voice now. “Not as good as my brilliant wife, but I get by.”

"I hear she's gorgeous, too," El said, and Peter chuckled. "Now shoo for a few minutes. I have to call some people and talk them into running events for me." She rarely had more than two events in a single weekend, so it shouldn't have been a problem, but she might have to bribe someone with a bonus. She'd see.

"Okay," he said. "I'll see about moving your ticket to, say, Sunday? That should give us time." He and Neal were under open-ended tickets, at MI5's expense.

"Sounds good." She pushed him away lightly, but then leaned in again. "You smell like Cheerios. Do they even have Cheerios over here?"

"Long story, and mostly Neal's fault," he said, but grinned as he kissed her and then left the room.

"Can you email Jones?" she said to his retreating back, and he called, “Yup,” as he closed the door. She opened up her laptop, looked at her schedule, and started going through the contacts on her phone. Ah, well. Satchmo would have to suffer without them for a few more days.

* * * * *

As a department head of MI6, Q was used to certain—fundamental realities of the job.

He was (for example) aware in a theoretical way that despite the best intentions of procedure and redundancy, every government, society, and structure is built of the same fallible human building block. He was similarly aware that sometimes even the best systems still break down, a weakness unforeseen until too late. More than once in the line of duty he’d had to make a call that could save or destroy everything he and his loved ones held dear; it was just part of his job. He’d done it before, and he’d do it again, and then he’d go home and have a nervous breakdown while holding his cat or waiting for James to return to England. That was just... how it went.

But he wasn’t currently thinking about any of that. His afternoon had been filled with all the usual flow of Q-Branch, equal parts data, paperwork, and projects to be approved or sent back for revision. The most pressing thing on his mind was his upcoming conversation with James, and the fact that his skin increasingly felt like someone had rubbed sandpaper all over it when he wasn’t paying attention and then substituted arsenic for sugar in his coffee. 

He didn’t even _like_ coffee, really; he only ever drank it when he needed the additional kick in the pants of its caffeine load, and he was grumpy beyond all proportion that the coffee tasted like it had been brewed with diesel fuel despite the eight liters of cream he’d added to it and _still_ wasn’t giving him the boost he needed.

Nonetheless, he gulped it down as he watched his latest code update for the door lock system scroll across the screen in a virtual test box, and catalogued mistakes idly—mostly in the parts he hadn't personally written, of course.

An interdepartmental envelope landed on his desk, and Q gave it a quick glance before ignoring it. Honestly, he had no idea why people still used paper for interdepartmental reports, when all electronic transmissions inside the building went through a network he'd secured personally, and half the time they just emailed him the report anyway. He sighed and scratched idly at his side, even though his own fingernails, short as they were, felt like burning lines of fire on his skin. Urgh. He needed more paracetamol, except for the fact that he wasn't due for a dose for another four or so hours.

He closed his eyes for a moment—an actual moment, not an 'I fell asleep and it's three hours later' moment—to relieve some of the burning, and heard a polite 'Ahem' from the door.

Opening his eyes, he saw it was James, which was . . . pleasant, definitely, but surprising. "James," he said. "I didn't expect to see you until the end of the day." He checked his clock surreptitiously to make sure that it wasn't, in fact, the end of the day (which it wasn’t yet, thank you very much).

James smiled. "I suppose not," he said. "Do you have a moment, Q?" His gaze flicked past the not-so-hidden cameras in the room.

Q typed in a few commands that would allow them a few moments of privacy and then turned to him. "What's on your mind?" Technically speaking, he wasn’t supposed to do that; realistically speaking, no one was going to tell him boo, because more than likely no one would ever find out. And even if they did, exceptions were routinely made for agents in the Double O program.

James picked up one of Q’s paper-weights—he had several of them, most of them serving to prop up tablets or act as mere decoration, as the number of papers needing weight on Q’s desk was next to nil—and fiddled with it, looking anywhere but at Q. “With the way things are going, I wasn’t sure there’d be an ‘after work,’” he said, his voice deceptively mild.

Right, and Q was going to go work a Bat Mitzvah after leaving Q Branch in his second job as a trained clown. “Well,” Q said, “your timing leaves something to be desired, probably, but I can’t say I’m not relieved you’re here.” He looked up at James, wishing badly to stand up and touch him, but holding back out of deference to their work environment.

“Ah, yes.” James set down the paper-weight and picked up one of Q’s pens instead, turning it idly over; Q thought it was lucky he wasn’t attempting to pass this nonchalance off on one of his missions, as exactly no one would buy it. “Are you sure the surveillance is all off?”

Q looked at his computer obligingly, hitting a few buttons to double-check his programs. “Yes,” he said. “Definitely.”

"Good, then," James said. He turned to the door behind him, presumably making sure that it was shut (which it was), and then turned to Q, his back towards the door. He looked down at the pen in his hands for a moment and then looked back up, face unreadable. "What are you going to do after I'm dead?" he said bluntly.

Q was rather glad he wasn't taking a sip of his shite coffee, because he'd have spat it out all over his keyboard, and possibly the monitor, too. The words hit him in the chest like a brick, and he sputtered, aghast. "James! Really?"

James stared at him, face still stony. "I don't know how to . . . not be someone who's likely to end up dead."

Q was glad he didn't actually have to answer the question; if James had pressed, he would likely had said something about hunting down and murdering whoever killed James, and then ruining the lives of everyone close to them, and then spending a lot of time drunk and sleeping at Moneypenny's. He wasn't sure what he'd do after that, but he thought James likely knew that already.

He flicked his gaze at the door and thought _fuckit_ , reaching for James; he grabbed James' hand, tugged him closer until he was standing between Q's slightly-spread legs, and looked up at him. "Are you telling me you've finally lost that death wish you go off on every mission with?" He tried for levity, but based on James' face, he’d failed. “James.”

James exhaled. “I don't know. Maybe.” He paused, his eyes moving over Q’s face, seeing something unfathomable. “But the death wish is integral to the job, so.”

Q could tell that, yes, this was exactly what had been eating at James for the past twenty-four hours. “You are the best, it’s true. It’s one of the many reasons I love you.” Q hooked his thumbs in the belt-loops of James’ expensive trousers, trying to work past the tightness in his throat. “Not the only reason, though.”

“It's mutual, you know,” James said gruffly. “But.” He paused, this time for so long that Q actually had to gesture at him to go on, until he finally forced the next words out: “I don't know how much I can change and still be myself.”

Q nodded slowly, trying to digest this. “You mean... retiring. Life after being a double-oh.”

James gave a short, curt nod. “That is, if I make it that far.”

“You will if I have any say in it,” Q said, more forcefully than he meant to. This conversation was inevitable, he knew; they’d have had it sooner or later. It was just his crap luck they were having it on a day where he increasingly felt like hot death.

James gave him the eyebrow. “And clearly, you have a say.” The words were sarcastic, but his tone wasn’t; something in his face seemed to smooth over, and Q got the distinct impression James had just said a bit more than he’d meant to.

“You're damn right I do.” He smiled up at James, though it was a little shaky, and then took a deep breath. “Well. I have to say that I don’t think being a house-husband would suit you.”

James chuckled, a dry creak more than an expression of mirth, and said, "No. No, it would not."

"You could teach," Q said, and before James could even make the face that he knew was coming, or cut off the conversation, he continued, his tone firm. "Train new agents. Advise. You've more tactical and field experience than everyone else in this building combined."

James made a disgusted face. "Is that what you see me becoming?"

"I don't care what you decide to do so long as you're not dead or suicidal," Q said flatly.

"But you don't care if I'm someone else."

Q raised an eyebrow at him. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but the person I'm with is James, not just 007. That's who I want. And I don't see him changing much."

"But 007 _is_ James." James set down the pen he'd been handling with rather more force than necessary. "Which you should understand: your bloody name is your title."

Q bit his lip, glancing at the pen that James had somehow managed not to mangle. "I _do_ understand." He molded his hands to James' hips, rubbing with his thumbs, not hard, but enough to be felt. "Look, I don't have any easy answers for you, but it's . . . it's not a zero-sum game. You're not planning to retire tomorrow. It's not a test you have to pass _now_. I mean—" Q cleared his throat. "Do you trust me?"

James hesitated.

That hurt. Q had expected it to hurt; had even somewhat expected a less-than-stellar response, but he still hadn’t anticipated how _much_ it would sting. He waited anyway, still rubbing soothing circles into James’ obliques with his thumbs, and finally James spoke. “Yes,” he said; it came out extremely final. “I trust you with my life every single day.”

Q raised his eyebrows at the unspoken ‘but,’ and waited, reminding himself that for James to talk about this with him at all was a huge step. Even still, he mentally revised his answer to Neal in their conversation the day before, wishing he’d thought to add, _get used to fucking up, because it’s going to happen_. James gave no sign of continuing, so Q finally gave up and prompted, “But?”

James tightened his jaw. “You trust me now,” he said. “You trust this—iteration of myself. How long is that going to be true? And don’t say ‘forever’ because that’s bloody _romantic_ and all, but it is not true.”

"I don't know," Q said evenly. "I think 'the rest of my life' is possible, though." Possible? Likely, which frightened him a little, but not more than the prospect of losing James. "If you tell me these things, instead of keeping them from me, it's very possible. So thank you." He took James' hand from where it hung next to his body, not quite lax, and kissed his knuckles, squeezing his fingers. "It'll take a lot of work, is what I was getting it. But I trust you to try. I just want you to give me the same chance."

James nodded, his face tight, and leaned down to kiss Q, quick but no less passionately for its brevity. He stepped out of Q's reach before Q could touch him again, lengthen the kiss, and was out of the door before Q could say a word.

Q watched him go. His chest hurt; it took several seconds to penetrate which was the feeling of being kicked in the diaphragm and which was the infection he now had to admit was burning through his lungs and skin. He bent over his desk, slipping off his glasses before putting his forehead to the cool wood for several seconds, struggling against the stinging in his eyes, the lump forming in his throat again.

He would not cry. Not here, not now. He reminded himself that this was a step forward, no matter how much it felt like having a door slammed in his face. After a moment he sat up, rubbing the heel of his palm against his eyes with an indignant sniffle. James was probably off to the shooting range to put some bullets in a target, or some other such testosterone-laden ritual meant to take the edge off. “Arse,” he muttered, but it had no heat.

Right. Back to work. Queen and country and all of that. Q sat up straighter, reaching reflexively for his now-cold mug of coffee, resetting the surveillance in the room before returning his attention to the documents awaiting completion.

It wasn’t until another fat brown envelope landed on his desk ten minutes later that he realized there was one from earlier he still hadn’t opened. “Fucking…” Q tore them both open, dumping the memos out onto his desk, and scanned the contents of each one.

He paused. Something turned over in his chest again, painful like a piece of food gone down the wrong pipe. He frowned and bent closer, re-read the memos a second time. Then he bent over his computer, maximizing the program read-out from earlier, the data from his own nanotracker that he’d totally forgotten to look at.

The first memo was the pathology report from biotech on the mystery gel sent over from the dead man’s apartment that morning. Most of it was numbers of antigens and cell count; the conclusion at the bottom read: _Closest match: Influenza A subtype H1N1, exact strain unknown._

The second memo was the team analysis of the mystery box that Neal had found in the same apartment. _Likely function: aerosol or compressed gas diffusion,_ read the concluding line.

Q looked up at his screen again, stared at the read-out of his biofeedback, abruptly sick to his stomach. His white blood cell count was elevated; specifically, his neutrophil count. The bolded data readout at the bottom of his screen gave him the blase interpretation of that factor: _Likely sources of elevation: physical stress, cancer, infection._

Q swallowed. His mind reeled; for several moments he could think of nothing except calling James, begging him to come back from wherever he’d gone to so Q could clutch him and not have to react. Then his training and natural fibre took over, and he squared his shoulders, putting his panic aside for the moment. He reached for his mobile, swiping it through the unlock and going to his speed-dial menu. He scrolled all the way down for the number he used the least: M’s personal line.

“Hello, sir,” he said into the phone. “Yes, I know, I’m sorry, but there’s something you need to see. It’s urgent.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The episode of X-Files that Diana is referencing is [Arcadia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_\(The_X-Files\)).


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing is, even when it's bad, it can always get worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Back in action, next chapter should be MUCH quicker than this update. Thanks for being patient!

Malhotra had dropped off a box of paperwork at the Americans’ hotel suite, since there was nothing else that the agents could do while they waited for the mysterious gel and the box to be analyzed. Peter and Neal had spread all the paperwork they had claimed over the coffee table in the main room, banishing El and her crossword puzzle to a chair on the other side of the room in a vain attempt to preserve some measure of security. Diana was going through her own stack of paper, and Jack was fighting with his laptop, and no one was particularly happy at the investigation being drawn out yet again, but, as Peter had said to Neal when he handed him the files, they likely should stick around the hotel for various reasons, and they might as well make themselves useful.

Neal had groaned, but he dutifully started going over transcripts of interviews, to see if they'd missed any connections with Mills. Peter was scanning through a different set of transcripts, and Diana had photographs.

"I'm not finding anything," Neal announced, throwing another file on top of the stack. "You?" he said, turning to look at Diana.

She shook her head grimly. "Boss?"

Peter shook his head, but his phone started vibrating on the table, and he picked it up. A moment later, Diana's phone also vibrated, and Neal's, and presumably Jack's, by the way he pulled it out of his pocket.

_Come down to MI6 immediately. Do not delay. A car will be there for you in approximately five minutes._

It was from Q, and the overly-formal wording was a little worrisome. A moment later, Peter got a second text that said, _Bring El_ , and that was significantly more worrisome. "Did everyone get a text from Q?" he asked.

"Yep," Diana said, and Neal and Jack nodded.

"El, we have to go down to MI6, now, you as well," Peter said, standing and shuffling the papers on the table into a stack.

"Me?" she asked, standing and folding her paper. "Okay."

"Yeah, I don't know either," he said, "but I don't like the sound of it."

Peter sent back a confirmation text but got no further response. They waited downstairs out front of the hotel, passing uneasy glances back and forth but not saying anything, until two sleek black cars pulled up to the curb, and an agent each got out of the driver’s sides. Peter, El, and Neal rode in one car—Peter wasn’t above pulling rank, when the situation warranted it—and Jack and Diana rode in the other. Peter took El’s hand as soon as they got inside, and it wasn’t thirty seconds before he noticed Neal’s hand creeping into her lap from the other side to take her free hand. They rode like that all the way there, no one say anything. It ranked as one of the most surreal car-rides of Peter’s life, right up with the time he’d ‘borrowed’ his parents’ car to go rescue a drunk friend from a party and then ended up joyriding until dawn.

The cars pulled up the long semi-circle out front of MI6’s new building, and two new agents came briskly down the steps, holding the doors for everyone to climb out. “Please put these on, sir,” said the agent nearest Peter, and held out a surgical mask.

Peter stared at him. “Why are we putting these on, exactly?” he asked, reaching out belatedly to accept the mask.

“Everything will be explained upstairs,” said the agent, his face unreadable. No one did poker-face like the British, Peter thought grimly.

Around him, everyone else suddenly found similar masks being pressed on them, and Peter was hard-put not to go into defense mode at the flickers of uncertainty and fear on El’s face. An echo of the same passed across Neal, too, but he was better at hiding it than El was.

Peter put on his mask and hooked the elastic around his ears before helping Elizabeth move her hair out of the way; on her other side, Neal got his mask on, pinching the wire over the bridge of his nose so it sat securely. Diana and Jack were similarly masked, their car having been right behind Peter's, and when they were all done adjusting, the MI6 agents led them inside, to an elevator in the lobby.

MI6 looked, well, nothing really how Peter had pictured it; despite knowing that MI6 had been attacked last year, it hadn't occurred to him that they would move it into a newly-renovated building, all slick surfaces and discreet security panels. It was very different from MI5's 1970s renovation and might have been a tad intimidating if Peter wouldn't have mostly been worried about whatever he needed the mask for.

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened onto a floor with a small lobby containing a single door, incredibly complicated-looking biometric scanners to one side, and the label "Q Branch" on the other side. Well. So this was Q's domain. Peter wasn't surprised that they'd been led there, but perhaps a little surprised that Q himself hadn't come to meet them.

The agent in front held his palm to the screen, submitted to a retinal scan, did a voice print, and stood back for facial recognition, along with typing in a code, the exact numbers blocked by metal around the sides of the pad. Beside Peter, Neal made a small, impressed noise, and Peter suppressed a snort. A moment later the door opened, and the agent herded the five of them through.

As tours went, it wasn’t much of one; they went right down the main hall that was the vertebrae of Q Branch, myriad offices and laboratories branching off from the main passageway, most of them behind frosted glass. The agents escorting them neither stopped nor slowed until almost the end of the hall, when they turned right and headed down yet another passageway, towards another expensive, sturdy-looking door. The universal biohazard symbol on the door gave Peter’s heart a painful lurch; what the _hell_ was going on?

Their escort stopped at the door, submitting to yet another round of retinal-voice-facial recognition, and then the door slid open. “This way, ladies and gentlemen,” said the agent, and Peter stood by, letting El and the rest of his team go in first before bringing up the rear.

Whatever he’d been expecting to see, he didn’t find it.

They entered a short hallway with three doors separating three large windows; each door led into a small antechamber with a sink and a stack of scrubs and masks. They were easily recognizable as isolation rooms, complete with plastic curtains in the doorways and some sort of air-handling unit above each opening. The antechambers' back walls were also giant glass windows, with the expected hospital-like room on the other side, and in the first room, sitting on the bed in scrubs, looking small and pathetic despite the ubiquitous laptop, was Q.

His hair was slicked down against his scalp instead of its usual artful mess, as though he’d just taken a shower—probably decontamination of some kind, Peter realized—and in the few moments before he caught sight of the group shuffling in, he wore a hang-dog look on his face that gave Peter another hurtful turn. In the split-second before Q noticed them, Peter thought he saw the edge of what he abruptly realized was a tattoo peeking out from under Q’s hospital gown, on his right arm. The bright swirl of color surprised him; Peter wouldn’t have pinned Q for a tattoo kind of guy. There was probably a story there; equally probably, now was not the time for it.

Then Q’s face came up, sighting them, and his expression smoothed. He stood, setting aside the laptop and coming to the edge of the glass, depressing a button on the wall. “Hello there,” he said. His voice had a tinny quality to it that Peter didn’t like. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”

“Q,” said Neal, sounding aghast; Peter didn’t need to see under the surgical mask to know the expression Neal was wearing. “What the hell is going on?”

“I’m afraid our situation has gone from ‘troubling’ to ‘dire,’” said Q. “007 will be here shortly—ah.” Behind them, the door whooshed open again, and in strode the aforementioned double-oh, wearing dangerous storm clouds in lieu of a mask, Peter noted with some concern. “There you are, Mr. Bond.”

“What the fucking hell is going on, Q?” Bond demanded.

The agent who had led Peter and company in handed Bond a mask, which he took largely out of reflex, Peter thought, and stared at for a moment without putting it on.

"007, put the mask on," Q said through the speakers, and Bond glared at him stubbornly before hooking the elastic over his ears. "There is reasonable suspicion to believe that all of you have been exposed to a mutant strain of H1N1," Q said.

"Reasonable suspicion?" Peter said, as El sucked in a breath.

"H1N1?" Diana said, and Peter remembered abruptly that Christie, her girlfriend, was a doctor.

"Not quite the same as the 2009 pandemic strain, but yes," said Q.

"Where were we exposed?" Jack asked.

Q pursed his lips, and looked as if he were going to respond, but his eyes suddenly tracked left, over Peter's shoulder, and before he could turn, someone spoke behind him. "I hardly think this is the time to worry about security clearance, Q."

The speaker was male, a few years older than Peter, as far as he could tell with a mask covering most of his face, neat and trim in what even Peter recognized as an outrageously expensive suit. Whoever he was, even Bond recognized his authority to some level and stood down a little—but only a little. The man scanned the Americans and said directly to Peter, "Hello, Agent Burke, I'm M. You'll understand if I do not offer to shake hands."

"Um, of course not," Peter said nervously. He didn't know what to do then—he’d never been formally briefed on what the Right Thing To Do was upon meeting the head of MI6—but when Neal elbowed him and jerked his head around, he said, "Er, this is my wife, Elizabeth; my CI, Neal Caffrey, Agent Diana Berrigan of the FBI, and Agent Jack Pfotenhauer of the CIA."

"Yes," M said, and Peter was fairly certain he'd known that already but that some measure of politeness needed to be satisfied. He would never quite understand the British, it seemed. "Good to finally meet you, Mr. Caffrey. I understand you led some of my agents on a merry chase, some years ago."

"I can neither confirm nor deny," Neal said, but he sounded nervous instead of charming.

"Sir?" Q said, breaking into the small talk.

"Quite right," M said. "Please elaborate, Q."

"Yes, sir. The gel found in Finley Mills’s apartment was a culture containing flu viruses and the box was a diffuser of some sort; we have also detected traces of the flu culture inside the diffusion box. We aren't sure yet where Mills meant to place the boxes, since it stands to reason there is more than one, but based on all relevant data, the art museum is a safe bet."

A simultaneous and near-identical inhalation went around the group, and Peter would’ve bet money that Diana and El, at least, suffered the same shiver that he did. “So the break-ins—” Peter started.

“—they were just a cover to mask the planting of the diffusers,” Neal finished. Patches of color rode high on his cheekbones, his eyes a little too wide.

M nodded. “We believe so, yes,” he said. “Admittedly real thefts did occur, but the museums chosen are high-traffic areas. We’re still following up the leads from this morning as to Alastair Thompson’s involvement; it’s still not clear what his ties to this situation are.”

“The autopsy report hasn’t come back from St. Bart’s yet,” said Q, “but I would be very much surprised if Mills was not infected with the same virus as was found in the gel.” 

“That’s why Mills’ apartment looked so clean,” said Diana stonily, and Peter nodded. “They murdered him in the hospital to keep him from talking to us, made it look like an accident, and then cleaned out his apartment to hide the evidence.”

“That’s our working assumption, yes,” Q said. 

“They must have missed the diffuser in the bottom of the cereal box,” Peter said. “I wonder if Mills hid it on purpose, or if he just forgot about it?”

“As he’s no longer able to tell us, we may never know, but I’d wager the former,” said Q. “Nevertheless. All museums known to have suffered recent break-ins have been closed for the rest of business hours today, and teams have been dispatched to search for more of the boxes.” He pursed his lips. “Depending on what they find, it’s possible that thousands of people may already have been exposed.”

“And what about you?” demanded Bond, some of his belligerence returning.

Q’s eyes flickered to Bond, something complicated passing over his face, there and then gone. “My blood test came back positive for H1N1 antibodies,” he said flatly.

“It’s the flu, not bloody Ebola,” Bond snapped, and Peter could feel as much as see the uneasy glance Elizabeth sent his way. “I realize it can be dangerous for some people, but you’re in the prime of your life! Is it really necessary to keep you in a glass fucking box?”

Q pursed his lips. "If we had any confirmation that this strain were typical of seasonal influenza, or even the same strain of H1N1 that went round a few years ago, that’d be all well and good,” he said, his gaze not quite meeting Bond’s. “But our head of Medical informs me that it rather more resembles the Spanish Flu of 1918. That strain differed from seasonal influenza by having a high mortality rate for those with strong immune systems, rather than killing primarily children and the elderly. The virus causes a cytokine storm, provoking the immune system to overload and ravaging the body." 

Several expressions flickered over Bond's face in rapid succession, roughly doubling the number of honest expressions Peter had seen on the other man since he'd known him—admittedly not long, but still. Rage, fear, love, disbelief, and despair, all easily identifiable, chased each other successively across Bond's features, settling in a hard, cold look that was clearly a mask. Peter's gaze flicked to Neal and El, and a frisson of pure terror went through him.

Yes, he understood at least some of what Bond was going through.

"We've got a lab assistant down here to test the six—no, seven of you," M said, jarring them out of a painful silence; Peter turned to see that Agent Malhotra had joined them, his face slightly red above his mask.

"My apologies, sir," Malhotra said, nodding to M. "Traffic was . . . uncooperative."

"No matter," M said. A second agent came forward, wearing a white lab coat, a tray of sterile swabs and vials in her hands.

They all submitted to a cheek swab, and she disappeared with the swabs and the vials, saying, "Your results will be ready in approximately fifteen minutes."

Which left them nothing much to do but wait. Peter was almost glad when M continued on, just as businesslike as though they weren’t facing a scenario out of a Stephen King novel. He took a few moments to re-iterate what had already been said for Malhotra’s benefit, and Peter got the dubious pleasure of watching Malhotra have the same sick realization they’d all just finished having.

“At the advice of the quartermaster and the head of my Medical wing, we have yet to alert the ECDC or the WHO,” said M. At this, Diana shifted, folding her arms across her chest. Peter couldn’t see her mouth, but he was willing to guess she was frowning; he knew that posture. M noticed, nodding at her. “Go on, Agent Berrigan.”

“Is there some compelling reason why we haven’t alerted the agencies best equipped to handle a pandemic?” she said bluntly.

“Yes,” said Q. He broke off, glancing at M, who nodded and gestured for him to continue. “We have yet to actually find any more boxes. Until we do, and have evidence that the virus has been dispersed en masse, as opposed to one unlucky individual, it would be prudent to not cause nation or world-wide panic.” As he spoke, he crossed his arms over his chest, gripping his elbows tightly in both hands; Peter noticed abruptly how skinny Q actually was. It was a little disconcerting.

“With all due respect, sir, that’s a bad call, and not yours to make,” said Diana, with yet more bite to her voice. “Do you know how many people died from the last H1N1 pandemic?”

“Yes,” said M, and to Peter’s amazement he did not sound angry in the least. “Just shy of 300,000 worldwide, by some mid-range estimates. But actually, it is my call to make, Agent Berrigan. I am tasked with maintaining the order, safety, and civility of Her Majesty’s United Kingdom at all costs. I do, in fact, have the authority to make this decision.”

Diana gave a sharp nod, but said, "Your authority is noted, sir."

"As is your objection, Agent Berrigan." M managed, still, to make it sound as if he weren't in the least annoyed by being questioned by a junior agent from another country.

Peter made a mental note to talk to Diana later, but in all fairness, he understood her impulse.

"I should note," Q said, "that a negative response on the swabs doesn't mean you aren't infected; it could mean that you are, but your immune system hasn't responded to it yet."

"If we are infected, we go into isolation here, correct?" Peter said.

"Correct," M said. "If not, you will return to your hotel and stay there, under guard, for twenty-four hours, at which time you will be re-tested. That will continue for three days, or until you test positive. Agents Bond and Malhotra will reside in short-term flats here at MI6 for the same time period. At some point, however, the CDC and WHO will have regulations about travel. I wouldn't expect to leave the country for at least the next week."

Peter looked at El, who shrugged; it wasn't as if they could disobey an international-travel ban, and even if so, she clearly couldn't go to any of her events until she'd been cleared of any possibility of flu. He held his hand out, though, and she took it. This was not exactly the time to give a damn about appearances.

“We’ve got some fun explaining to do, then,” said Neal, trying for levity and mostly failing.

“You will have to put your considerable talents to use then, Mr. Caffrey,” said M. “You are not to speak to anyone outside of this immediate investigation about what we discussed here today. I will not start a panic anywhere for any reason until we have more evidence.” He inclined his head slightly at Peter as he went on, “I must apologize for the invasion of privacy, but your phone lines and communications will be monitored for the next three days, or until the situation changes in such a way as to warrant the security measures unnecessary.”

“That’s preposterous, _sir_ ,” growled Bond.

M leveled a raised eyebrow at him, which did exactly nothing to abate Bond’s surly glare. “Your concern is noted, 007,” said M after a moment, and for the very first time Peter detected a hint of an edge. “As much as I would dearly love to send you after the person who did this, we don’t yet know who or where they are. And until such time as we have a use for your particular skill-set, I will request that you keep your counsel to yourself or to those who wish to hear it.”

"Sir," Bond said stiffly, and straightened into a quasi-military position.

After Bond's explosion, everyone lapsed into a tense silence; fortunately, it only lasted a couple of minutes before the lab assistant was back, a carefully-neutral look on her face. "No one tested positive," she said, "but that doesn't mean you aren't infected." She took a deep breath to explain, but Q pre-empted her.

"Yes, Lucy, we've told them," he said, and Peter still wasn't used to the tinny sound of the intercom. "Well, enjoy your quarantine."

M shot Q a quick look, and Q said, "Excuse my impertinence, sir."

"Quite all right," M said, even though it clearly wasn't. "Bond, Agent Malhotra, you'll be in the overnight rooms."

Whatever they were, it clearly meant something to Bond and Malhotra; the former nodded and the latter gave a slight wince.

M smiled at the Americans, or at least Peter thought so, based on the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. "Well. The cars that took you here are waiting to take you back. Have you any questions?"

“I do,” said Neal. “Q, why are you infected and we aren’t? You haven’t spent half as much time investigating this case hands-on as me or Peter.”

Q made a face; it looked as though he were trying for a droll smile and failing by a rather large margin. “I’m just lucky that way, I suppose,” he said lightly. 

“Without yet knowing the exact time and place of exposure to the pathogen, it’s impossible to guess at incubation length,” said Lucy, sounding as matter-of-fact as a woman giving directions to the nearest bus stop. Neal pursed his lips and nodded. It wasn’t an answer, really, but with a sinking heart Peter realized they weren’t likely to get one, at least not yet.

“Very well,” said M. “Will that be all? Were there any other questions?”

Peter shook his head, as did everyone else. "Thank you, sir," he said, and the rest echoed. They traipsed back through Q Branch and into the elevator, and Peter sighed. 

Worst vacation _ever_.

* * * * *

Q watched his friends and companions go, momentarily distracted with wondering how they were going to cope with the news he’d just dropped on their heads. He could see the lines of shock and rage etched in every pale face and rigid spine, every pair of eyes avoiding contact with everyone else’s.

He guessed that Peter would react like M might; they were similar in character, Q thought, and Q would not be surprised if Peter spent the next however many hours talking out the worst-case scenario with anyone who would listen, listing every iteration of every possibility—anything to regain a semblance of control. El, on the other hand, seemed the kind to need action to distract herself from her fear, so Q guessed she would comfort herself by comforting others any way she could find.

Neal would be a crapshoot; he spent so much time playing different roles that it was difficult to predict exactly how he might respond, but if Q had to hazard a guess he would say that Neal might put on a cheerful face just long enough to get somewhere safe enough to break down and hide. Q knew Neal was softer and more gentle than he liked to let on, even to El and Peter, and while Q hoped that Neal might find the resolve to reach out to the Burkes, he wasn’t entirely sure Neal was ready for that yet. 

And for all that he’d spent the better part of the past year learning all the ways he loved James, Q still wasn’t entirely sure what his lover would do now. He thought—well. 

He thought that James had had the “flight” part of “fight-or-flight” trained out of himself so completely that he might now be left with precious few options. Q guessed that James would go to the nearest work-out facility and attack every machine and training device with all the fury of a spring storm, destroying everything in his path until his rage was spent, leaving not a rack behind.

He knew they were afraid, and why, but despite (or perhaps because of) being the only one amongst their number with a confirmed infection, he felt light—unburdened. He was already struck down, the fear of possible disease already played out, but unlike the others, Q was nowhere near powerless, even kept in his little glass box. After all, he was on his home territory, right in the heart of Q Branch.

And he had _work_ to do.

He had his laptop and a network connection, and a kind soul had brought him his electric kettle and a box of tea, so even after he'd been poked and prodded and had given up more blood to the medical department vampires than he ever wanted to, even after the indignity of a decontamination shower, he was ready to work.

When he was finally alone, he unlocked his computer and checked the program that he'd started earlier, one running Mills's face through a comparison with every piece of CCTV footage he could get. No matches yet, but it hadn't even hit a full percent complete, and he wasn't entirely surprised. He flipped over to the code he'd been working on before, checking for flaws in security, and lost himself in regular expressions until he heard a voice say through the intercom, "Q?"

It was Moneypenny, wearing a mask, standing in the hallway, outside the antechamber. She looked worried, as far as he could see, and definitely sounded worried when she said, "I heard."

"Yes, well," Q said. "I've never taken a sick day for being ill, merely injured. I thought I deserved some time off."

The attempt at humor fell flat, though, and Moneypenny just said, "I'm so sorry."

It was on his lips to say something biting, some acerbic comment about everyone acting like he had one foot in the grave already, but he managed somehow to refrain. Instead, Q took a deep breath, and said, “Well. Thank you, I suppose, but please let’s remember that it’s merely a precaution, not a death sentence. I have felt worse, I must say.”

“Oh sure,” said Moneypenny lightly, “after suffering near-death by synthetic snake venom, what’s a little spot of plague for our intrepid quartermaster?”

“Bite me, Moneypants,” said Q, and that finally got a smile out of her. Or, well, he thought she smiled; the corners of her eyes crinkled, anyway. “I take it you’ve been cleared? At least for now, anyway.”

“More or less,” she said. “I’ve been hanging around with you a fair bit, Typhoid Harry, so there’s a reasonable chance it’s got me as well, but for now I’m fine. Off-duty for most of my regular obligations, though.”

"Ah, yes. Wouldn't want to infect anyone coming in to see the man himself," Q said, nodding sagely. "Or, for that matter, wouldn't want you to get close enough to infect him directly."

Moneypenny snorted delicately. “You mean, within two hundred meters. He was the first one wearing a surgical mask, and of course he had them in his desk.”

“His desk?”

"Third drawer on the left,” she said with a nod. “Himself is testing clear as well, but he's not leaving the building tonight."

"And neither are you?" Q said, unable to resist putting a tiny bit of innuendo in his voice, even though he wasn't sure it was audible over the intercom.

"Of course I'm leaving," she said, staring at him impassively. "Someone has to go feed Carly, and the decision was made that I am less likely to be sick than the only other person who can access your apartment."

Ahh. "Good call," he said.

“One of us has to make them, as you and Bond are clearly out of the running,” she said dryly.

“Piss off,” he said. “Can you get actual clothes for me while you’re there? As fashionable as these are.” He gestured to himself in his hospital gown and made a face.

“I dunno, I quite like it on you,” she said. “Of course, boffin. Anything else I can pick up while I’m there?”

“Er… my tablet? It’ll be on the table by the bed. That’s it, I think.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’d ask you to pick up clothes for James, too, but since I actually think he has spare suits socked away across half of London, he can fend for himself.”

“It’s just as well, as I’d tell you to get bent,” Moneypenny told him. “Bond is capable of sorting himself out.”

“Supposedly,” said Q. “He did come by and talk to me today, by the way.” Moneypenny’s eyes went up, and Q sighed. “It’s complicated,” he said. “Good, mostly. I think. Anyway, no knee-caps need breaking, so that’s something.”

“Good to know,” said Moneypenny. “You can tell me later, once you’ve finished not dying.” Her voice was light, and her posture didn’t change, but something in the tightness around her eyes told Q that she wasn’t actually taking this anywhere near as well as she pretended to, despite her willingness to follow his lead.

“I have no intention of dropping off,” Q told her, putting every ounce of sternness into his voice that he could manage. “I have entirely too much work left to do, and all of MI6 would go up in flames without me, so it’s out of the question.”

“That’s our boffin.” Moneypenny straightened, giving him a salute that was only half-teasing. “Right. I’d better be off. Take your medicine, for the love of God, and remember to actually get some sleep, quartermaster.”

“Duly noted, Agent Moneypants. Now go feed my cat, she’s probably beside herself.” 

Moneypenny flipped him two fingers before turning smartly and heading out of the room, her stilettos clicking on the ceramic floor.

Q’s shoulders sagged the moment she was out of sight, suddenly drained beyond all belief. He turned back to his computer and his crappy little bench, wishing for the comfort of his home workstation, or his own computer desk in Q Branch. Worse than that, he missed James—wanted his lover to come see him, even if they could do nothing more constructive than trade witty barbs through the glass. Just having James close would’ve make Q feel better. 

But James wasn’t here. He was—somewhere else, coping badly. And Q couldn’t blame him, really, but he still felt abandoned. 

Sleep. Right. He stood a better chance of sprouting a pair of wings.

* * * * *

There was something about hearing a possible death sentence and world-wide disaster that put things at once into a weirdly blurred state and yet also a sharper focus. Or maybe just for El. She barely noticed the ride back to the hotel, but she could have catalogued every single expression that crossed Peter's and Neal's faces. She didn't remember the elevator ride up to their floor, but she watched Diana fumble uncharacteristically with the door key before she managed to get the door open.

The inside of the room seemed strangely bright, despite the late hour, and they all paused for a moment just inside. "Well," Jack said, breaking the tableau, "I'm going to call my wife."

El blinked, not having known that he had one; he wasn't wearing a ring, but then again, he was in the CIA.

"I'm calling my mother," Diana said, heading for her room.

"M—Haversham," Neal said, and El heard the slip, marking him as more affected than he looked. She looked at Peter, who was still obviously attempting to figure some way out of the situation, the thoughts flying across his face plainly legible to her, and tilted her head at the door to their room.

He followed her inside, obediently, and when the door closed, he said, "They'll figure it out, El, someone will; Q's a genius, and if someone needs to be shot, Bond can shoot them."

"I know," El said, and held her arms out.

He froze for just a moment, clearly torn between needing to plan and be strong and needing her, but she knew him too well. He wrapped his arms around her, tucking her under his chin, one hand at her waist and the other behind her head. "Oh, El," he said.

“I know,” she said again, because there was nothing else _to_ say. Not right now. El wrapped her arms tightly around Peter, and they just stood there like that for a minute, him rubbing the small of her back through her light sweater, small rhythmic movements that she thought he was only partly aware of.

“I wonder if I can get a refund on changing my plane ticket back,” El murmured. “Does travel insurance cover acts of God and bioterrorism?”

Peter let out a laugh into her hair that had just a touch of hysteria to it. “Oh my god, El,” he said, and then paused, before observing, “I wouldn’t want to be the insurance agent to deal with that claim.”

“Me either,” she said, and pulled back enough to smile up at him. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was at least real. He was here, safe, alive, in her arms. There had been so many cases he’d worked on where she’d wanted nothing more than that, and at least this time he wasn’t getting shot at. "Bed?" she suggested, meaning nothing more than a more comfortable way to hold each other.

Which she was sure he knew, but he let out a breath slowly and said, "Can I take a shower, first? I know it won't—do anything, but I feel really gross anyway."

She nodded, and took a step back. "I'll be right here."

Peter nodded back, and started loosening his tie; Elizabeth brushed his hands away, and did it for him, undoing the knot and pulling it out from under his collar. He shed his coat as she unbuttoned his shirt and held it awkwardly for a moment until she took it from him and draped it over the foot of the bed. His belt followed; he toed off his shoes as she curled the belt into a ring and grabbed a hanger for his jacket.

She took his pants, too, and hung those up as soon as he'd stripped them off, and let him leave his socks and underwear in a pile on the floor. He turned to go to the bathroom, and she reached out and touched his arm before he could go.

"Kiss me?" she implored, at his inquisitive look.

He smiled and did, warm and sincere and, despite his nudity, comforting. "I love you," he said.

"I love you, too." She patted his rear end. "Shower."

"Heh," he said, smirking a little, and disappeared into the bathroom.

Which left her all alone with nothing but her thoughts for company. Elizabeth stared at the bathroom door—he’d left it cracked, just a little; he never locked doors against her, and most of the time he didn’t even bother properly shutting them—but she knew he’d be busy trying to scrub the feel of infection off his skin, no matter how futile that particular exercise was. She’d be in there herself at some point soon, she knew.

For now, she turned around and crawled onto the bed, stretching out on her back to stare at the ceiling and listen to the sounds of Peter in the shower, the dim noises of traffic outside. Faintly, she heard voices, someone’s laughter, drifting up to her through the cracked window of their bedroom, and the casual sound of it made her ribs contract around her lungs. How could people laugh when something so terrifying was happening? How could they not _know_?

It seemed impossible to her that anyone, anywhere, could not have been struck down with the same sickening fear that sat like spent bullets in her stomach. El pressed her hands over her face, fingertips pushing against her eyeballs through her lids. She took a deep breath in; her hands smelled like pomegranate and apple, the hand lotion Peter had bought for her. She held her breath, forcing out all other thoughts, just for a moment, listening instead to her own heartbeat. _Thump, th-thump, th-thump._ Her chest hurt, lungs burning with the urge to exhale. She held the air for five more seconds, then let it out slow. Her eyes stung, and she brought her hands away, swiping a thumb at the corner of one eye, automatically careful not to smear her makeup. She swallowed around the constriction in her throat, and then took another deep breath, letting it out immediately this time.

They weren’t dead. They weren’t dead. It was the flu, not a death sentence. They weren’t dead.

She kept repeating that to herself for a couple of minutes, trying to force back everything else from her mind, and she almost missed the knock at the door. It was barely a knock, more of a scratch, and she knew who it was immediately: Neal. Her heart jumped in her chest, and she threw herself off the bed, hurrying to the door and opening it.

There he stood, wearing a cotton sweater and dark jeans, about as casual as he got in actual clothing, his hair wet and slicked away from his face. Apparently he'd felt the same urge to shower that Peter had, and El certainly didn't blame him. "Hi," he said, uncharacteristically diffident.

"Come in," she said, smiling at him by way of encouragement.

He did, stepping through the doorway, and she shut the door behind him. "So it's Peter in the shower?" he said, pushing an errant strand of his hair back where it belonged. "I didn't know."

El nodded. "He'll be out in a minute."

Neal nodded, and then risked a glance at her before looking away again.

She'd seen a lot of his masks over the last two-and-change years, and she'd gotten used to the way that he could cover up nearly anything. But she'd seen him express true joy, and true happiness, and that brief glance—it had the same ring of truth, but it was fear, and despair, and longing, and all she could do in the face of that look was say, "Neal," and hold out her arms.

He froze for a few seconds, long enough for El to flash on Peter describing Neal’s deer-in-the-headlights expression, and then he stepped forward and pulled her against him, wrapping both arms around her and burying his face against her hair. He wasn’t quite as tall as Peter, and he didn’t have Peter’s heft, but she fit against him almost perfectly anyway. El slid both her arms around him, pressing a hand to his spine, the other coming up to scratch at the nape of his neck. “Sweetheart,” she murmured, and she’d have missed the hitch in his next breath if she hadn’t been pressed up against him.

“I’m sorry,” Neal said, and El had to fight the urge to laugh. Of course he’d apologize. “I’m not, I shouldn’t—”

“Don’t you start, mister,” she said, pulling back enough to look up at him. He blinked down at her, and she smiled, catching his face gently in one hand. “If you hadn’t come over I might have given up and come to get you myself.”

“Oh,” he said. That got her a bit of a smile. Better.

"Come here," she said, and led him to the bed. He didn't hesitate, just followed her over, and lay down where she directed him to. They were both fully dressed, and the bed was neatly made other than where El had mussed it earlier, and she lay on her back, next to him, tugging his hand so he was curled against her on his side, head on her shoulder. His hair soaked through the shoulder of her cardigan, and she didn't care, even though she had a silk shell on underneath. "I'm so sorry about your friend," she said.

"It's—" Neal said, and sighed, his breath warm against her skin. "Did you see the look on Bond's face?"

El nodded. It was there only for moments, but she’d never seen anyone look so desolate.

"I just—" He stopped, took a deep breath, and tried again. "If it were you in there, or Peter—"

"I know," she said, when he stopped and didn't go on. "If it were you, Peter would stop at nothing to make you well again, and I'd be right there with him."

Neal nodded, and the hand resting on her waist squeezed gently. His palm was on her stomach, his fingers between the cardigan and the shell, and his thumb was moving slowly against her, the heat of his hand in no way muted by the thin fabric. "I understand it's the flu, and it's not necessarily a death sentence—even during the 1918 flu, not everyone who got sick died—but . . ." He trailed off.

"But it doesn't feel that way," she finished for him. Neal nodded distractedly. His hand slid upward a little, the silk making it very easy, and it was mostly pleasant and sensual rather than sexual, but she didn't think his movements were conscious. "Sweetie, that's my bra."

"Oh," he said, and raised his hand, guilt making him tense up. "I'm sorry, I—but the lace through the silk—"

Ah. He liked the texture. Unsurprising, that Neal was a sensualist. She caught his hand where it was hovering in mid-air, and brought it back down. "I don't mind," she said, "but I wasn't sure if you knew what you were doing."

"Not really," he said, rueful, and traced the curve of the underwire of her bra. "El—you and Peter—I don't want to—"

Despite his hesitations, she thought he knew what she was asking. "Peter and I are solid. We're a thing. We just—also want you. So you're not between us, other than possibly literally, so much as in addition to us."

"Oh," he breathed. He paused; she watched his eyes track along her arm, the words he wanted to say held back more because of habit than anything else. (Well, she hoped.)

“Yes?” she prompted.

Neal looked up at her, eyes flashing big and blue as a smile appeared, a real smile, not a patented Caffrey one. “I was, um. Just thinking how nice that sounded.”

Elizabeth chuckled. “Which part?”

“All of it,” he said immediately, with a desperation that made her ache.

“And here I was thinking you were focused on the literal part,” she teased, and he started to protest, eyes too wide, and she laughed and pressed two fingers to his mouth. “Shh, stop, I’m just teasing you.”

“El, please,” he insisted, taking her hand and lacing his fingers with hers. “I mean it. I believe you, but…” El waited, biting back the urge to try to reassure him again, guessing intuitively that it wouldn’t really “take” until he’d had a chance to express what was bothering him the most. “I believe you,” he said again. “And I trust you. Both of you. It’s me I’m worried about.”

"Oh?" she said, when he didn't say anything for a few seconds.

"I don't have a very good track record at this sort of thing," he said finally, and, well, yes. That she should have expected, considering all that she'd known about Kate. "I trusted Kate; I fell hard. I thought it was real for years and years, and then it turns out it wasn't, or it might not have been, and I'll never know."

"Oh, sweetheart," she said, but apparently he wasn't finished.

"And I know—I mean, intellectually, I know it's Peter, and he's the most straightforward, sincere person I've ever met in my life, but that much earnestness still makes me think, _what is he hiding?_ Which isn't a smart or logical reaction, but . . ." He shrugged. "I trust him with my physical safety, and my life, and I know, on some level, you'll catch me, both of you, but I'm still afraid of the fall."

Oh, Neal. Her poor bruised Neal. She pulled him in as close as she could, and said, "I don't know what I could say—or what Peter could say—to make this easier for you, but as far as I know, the only thing he's hiding is the depth of what he feels for you."

“He’s got a better poker face than I give him credit for, then,” said Neal. He tried for it as a joke, and winced when it came out a little flat. “I’m sorry,” he said immediately, and El poked him in his ribs.

“You apologize again and I’m going to gag you,” she informed him.

The ‘threat’ worked; Neal grinned, even if it looked a little pained. “Only if you promise it’ll be with a pair of your underwear,” he said.

“That can be arranged,” El noted, and got the satisfaction of Neal flushing from his throat all the way up his face.

The shower shut off, then, and Neal tensed. "I should—"

El put a hand on his arm, to keep him in place. "No, you shouldn't," she said. "Do you think Peter's going to be anything but thrilled and relieved to find you here?"

"Well, no, but—" The door opened, cutting off his reply, and El craned her head up a little to see Peter standing in the doorway, towel around his waist, his hair finger-combed into place and drops of water still running down his shoulders and chest. Neal turned, too, and sucked in a breath, and El was glad that, whatever else was going on in his head, he certainly wasn't unaffected by a nearly-naked, dripping Peter.

About twenty different expressions crossed Peter's face, in the long moment that he stared at El and Neal, entwined on the bed, but the last two that El saw were relief and love, and he said, finally, "Good."

Just that single word, and Neal relaxed, turning back to push his face into El's hair. She stroked his hair, watching Peter, who mouthed at her, _Clothes?_

 _Yes, please_ , she mouthed back. Not that she really wanted him to put on clothing, but honestly, he had no idea how distracting he was and he would probably accidentally end up seducing Neal when what Neal needed, she thought, was comfort.

Peter got dressed in record time (for a value of “dressed” that meant “pajama bottoms and a t-shirt”) and then came around to sit on the bed on Neal’s other side, easing himself down to lay alongside him. It was a mirror image of how they’d all fallen asleep the other night, except that this time El had no intention of letting Neal go running out of their room in a panic, and it was a fair bet that Peter was on the exact same page.

“Was wondering when you’d come over,” Peter said, his voice an odd mixture of Fed-gruff and tender. Neal stirred, peering up at him from where he lay curled against El’s side. Peter smiled down at him. “We’ve been worried about you, y’know.”

“I’m the reason we’re here at all,” said Neal unhappily. “Those are my paintings in the Tate, if it hadn’t—”

“ _Neal_ ,” said Peter, and Neal shut up instantly. “Who’s running this show?”

“You are,” said Neal, and Peter nodded. Neal deflated slightly. “But—”

“No buts,” said Peter. “You’re here under my authority; the British government put in a request for your help, and I approved it. If there’s someone at fault, it’s me.”

“Okay,” said Neal, and relaxed another notch, some of the anxiety leeching from the lithe frame still laying against El. El watched in fascination; she’d seen their back-and-forth before, could read the shades of something like power exchanged between them, and could even see how Neal seemed to be happiest right after Peter had put the smack-down on him for something or another, but she’d never seen it so overt before. Then again, Neal had never been curled up in bed between his handler and his wife before, either.

Peter rested his hand on Neal's waist, and gave El a look before saying, "I suppose we should talk about—"

"No," Neal said, surprising El a little with the vehemence of his interruption. "No, not right now. I know there are ethical issues with me being here at all, and logistics, and, hell, sexual histories to exchange, but I don't want reality to intrude."

"What _do_ you want?" El asked.

"Can I stay?" he said. "Here? I don't know if this is the time for anything more, but—I don't want to be alone right now." He curled in a little on himself as he said that, looking down, his eyelashes shading his eyes.

It looked like a trick, false modesty or seduction, but it didn't _feel_ like one, and El put her hand on his cheek as she said, "Whatever you want."

"Whatever you need," Peter said from Neal's other side.

Neal let out a long, shuddering sigh and said, "Thanks." With a little wriggling—causing Peter's face to contort almost comically—and tugging, he pulled them closer together, sandwiched in the middle of the bed.

"I'm in between two of the kindest, most gorgeous people in the world," Neal murmured, "in a lovely hotel in an amazing city, and all I want is a nap. How depressing is that?"

Peter chuckled, and El said, "Not depressing at all." She kissed him on the forehead. "Go to sleep, sweetie. We'll be here when you wake up."

"Mmm, good," Neal said, and settled a little deeper into the mattress. His breathing started to even out.

Peter's hand on Neal's side lifted an inch or so, and he wiggled his fingers; El reached over and took his hand, squeezing once. She traced a heart with her fingertip on the palm of his hand, and he traced one back with his thumb on hers. She smiled, and closed her eyes as well.

* * * * *

As much as Peter would have loved to stay wrapped around Neal and his wife in bed forever, the problem was that he was itchy. Well, not physically itchy; if he had been, the shower would have taken care of that. But under his skin, something itched, and it was making him fidget.

He couldn't be doing that, though. It would wake Neal, and he had fallen into true sleep a few minutes ago. El was merely dozing, and as Peter disentangled his fingers from hers and eased away from Neal's back, she blinked at him sleepily.

He pointed to the door and mimed walking with his fingers, and she nodded. He had no idea if she really knew what he meant, since normally that meant "time to let the dog out," but it was fine. It took a couple minutes to find the hoodie he'd stuffed in the suitcase, and he was afraid for a moment that El had unpacked it and put it somewhere when he wasn't looking, but it was there, buried under his socks. He pulled it over his head, resettled his hair, decided he didn't need shoes to go pace around in the common room, and quietly slipped out the door.

Diana looked up at him as he entered the room, raising her hand in a little wave from where she was curled up in a ball at the corner of the couch. She looked exhausted; Peter could hardly blame her. “Hey, boss,” she said softly.

“Hi.” Peter came and sank onto the couch a few feet from her. “How’re you holding up?”

She shook her head slightly. “I’ve been better,” she admitted. “Christie was…” Diana made a face, and then sighed, her shoulders sagging unhappily. “I get really sick of telling her that I can’t tell her why I can’t be there, because it’s classified.”

A memory tugged at the back of Peter’s mind. “Weren’t you supposed to—”

“—meet her in DC for the weekend,” Diana confirmed. “Yeah. Third time in a row I’ve had to cancel on her.”

“Ouch.” Peter knew that frustration all too well. Their jobs made their personal lives really damn hard sometimes, but at least Peter didn’t also have a long-distance relationship to contend with. He’d met Christie before and liked her immensely; she was whip-smart and funny as well as beautiful. It had been easy to see why Diana loved her. But he could also all too easily imagine how difficult it was to make two very different high-powered careers mesh in any sort of complementary way.

"How are you doing?" Diana asked.

Peter shrugged. "Okay," he said. "No worse than expected after hearing that kind of news. El had already called in reinforcements for her events this weekend, so at least there wasn't that complication."

"Mm," Diana said, and then, "So I realize that now's not the time, but then, it never is, so . . . would you like to tell me why I saw Neal go into your room half an hour ago and I haven't seen him come out?"

For a moment Peter was taken aback that Neal had been careless enough to let Diana see him go into their room, but, well, either Neal really was that far gone—not as surprising as it sounded—or Diana had seen him go in while still in her room, perhaps. "You're right," he said. "Now's not the time."

"As far as I'm concerned," Diana said, "what anyone needs for comfort after what happened this afternoon isn't my business, but I hope you know what you're getting into."

A significant portion of Peter really wanted to point out to Diana that he was _her_ supervisor, that she'd been _his_ probie, not vice versa, but, well, she was right, and he knew she was right, but . . . "I'll keep that under consideration," he said.

"Jones okay to keep looking after Satchmo?" Diana said, and luckily his sigh of relief was internal.

“Yeah, for a little while longer, anyway.” Peter shook his head. “I’m giving it another 24 hours and then we’ll have to see what’s going on. I gotta tell you, Diana, I agreed with what you said to M, but did you really have to…” He made a face.

“Did I have to say it like that?” prompted Diana, with a slight smile. “Sorry, boss. I know it was out of line. But I stand by what I said.”

Peter sighed, this time out loud. “I want to think that doing what he does, the man’s seen situations like this before, and he knows what he’s doing, but if he hasn’t called the WHO by tomorrow morning I’d be really tempted to do it myself and just take whatever consequences come from it.” Diana looked at him for a long moment, and nodded: just once, the short sharp nod of complete and unswerving loyalty.

Aside from El, Diana was the only person who knew how much it cost Peter to admit something like that. He wasn’t naive enough to have any sort of blind faith in his government—he’d been all of six months old when the Watergate scandal broke—but he believed in laws and rules in an almost spiritual sense. He believed that procedures and governmental bodies were meant to protect and sustain their people, not oppress them, and that it was more important than ever in times of great strain to turn to those principles in order to find the way through.

It had struck him as deeply wrong that an authority figure like M would resist calling on the group that existed for the explicit reason of guiding nations through the kind of crisis they might be facing. It flew in the face of everything he’d been taught and everything he believed in, despite his own very real experiences clashing with conflicting or competing agencies (he wouldn’t soon forget the corruption in OPR, that was for damn sure). And while his respect for authority had kept him from speaking up when Diana did, if it went on for too much longer, Peter didn’t think he’d be able to help himself.

So it warmed him, really, to know that Diana had his back, and he thought maybe she was somewhat mollified to know that he had hers, at least on this issue. El and Neal would follow his lead, but because it was him; he'd been told, and not just by El, that his fundamental dedication to justice was appealing, but that wasn't why he did it. (Actually, he didn't completely understand how that could be appealing, but he digressed.)

He was about to ask Diana if she was hungry—although they'd had a late lunch, no one had really eaten dinner—when the door to Jack's room opened and the man himself slunk out, looking like he'd gone ten rounds with a brick wall. "Hey," Peter said.

"Hey," Jack said, and he sounded as rough as he looked. "D'you think the MI6 flunkies will let me go down the hall to get a Coke?"

Diana smiled, and Peter said, "If you're lucky, you might be able to talk them into buying it for you."

"Good call." Jack went to the door and spoke with the MI6 agents guarding the door briefly, then came back. "They said they'd put it on my bill."

“Damn, I should’ve thought of that,” said Diana, with feeling. “I wonder if this place has cheeseburgers on its menu.” That thought made her smile, for some reason; Peter guessed it was either nerves or—he had no idea, really.

“Something funny?” he prompted, and Diana snorted and shook her head.

“Ask Neal about his thousand-dollar cheeseburgers sometime,” was all she said.

“Screw thousand-dollar burgers, I just want an In-n-Out Burger animal style,” said Jack, coming across and collapsing on the couch next to Peter. The _cr-crack_ his spine made as he sat down made Peter and Diana wince in sympathy. “Should’ve never taken that transfer to the Twin Cities from San Diego.”

“No _kidding_ ,” said Diana. “How’d you give that up?”

Jack made a noncommittal noise in his throat. “Pay raise, lower cost of living,” he said. “And my dad lives in St. Paul, and he was—well, he was getting sick, so.”

“That’s rough,” said Peter, and Jack nodded.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Jucy Lucys, and Surly Furious is the best damn beer I've ever had, but I miss the ocean." Jack sighed.

The knock came at the door, saving Peter from having to ask what a Jucy Lucy was, and Jack answered it, returning with three Cokes. "I wasn't sure what you wanted, but . . ."

"Thanks," Peter said, and Diana echoed it as they took the bottles from him. It tasted a little funny, not quite like Coke did in the US (and Peter couldn’t honestly have said whether that was all in his head or not) but it still tasted like home, and they all drank in silence for a moment.

"Did you ever wonder," Jack said suddenly, "what kind of asshole cooks up this sort of shit?"

"I assume you don't mean Coke," Diana said wryly, and Jack snorted.

"What tips someone over from 'misanthrope' to 'supervillain bent on world destruction,' you mean?" Peter said, and tilted the bottle to take another sip. "I don't know. There are a lot of reasons people turn to a life outside the law, that's the truth."

“Yeah, no kidding. I’ve seen most of ‘em; I thought nothing surprised me anymore.” Jack shook his head slightly. “You ever wish you’d done something different with your life? Done something where you wouldn’t see quite so much…” He gestured vaguely, still staring at the wall.

Diana and Peter exchanged a glance. “You see more of it than we do,” Peter said after a moment. “That’s why I went into the White Collar division. Well, one of the reasons, anyway.”

Jack nodded, glancing over at Peter with a complicated expression on his face. “I want to believe the person who did this is just—insane,” he said finally. “That they’ve lost their mind, or they have no compassion, or they’re a psychopath. One of those people who puts poison in kids’ candy for the awful kick of it.”

“But you know it’s not true,” Diana put in, quietly, and Peter nodded. She’d listened to the same lecture at the BSU that he had, back at Quantico; he’d been lucky enough to actually get to hear it from Robert Ressler himself, and he’d never forgotten it, or the message Ressler had been there to instill in them. “They’re just some sad sack of a human being. That’s why it’s so bad.”

“There, but for the grace of God, go I,” said Peter, and it was Jack and Diana’s turn to nod, though he hadn’t even known he was going to say it till the words came out of his mouth. He sank a little lower in his seat, feeling the cold bottle in his hand start to perspire from his body-heat. He wished for something else to say, some meaningful, spirit-raising little speech that might lift this gloom a little, but there was nothing.

"Do you think we can order a pizza?" Diana said, a few minutes into the silence that stretched out afterward.

Peter laughed; he wasn't hungry, didn't think El and Neal were, but maybe they would be after their nap. Besides, cold pizza made an excellent breakfast. "Make sure there's some pepperoni and sausage."

Jack perked up a little at the mention of food, and Peter thought they'd be all right. _Well, if we don't all die of flu._

Boy, that was a cheerful thought. He squashed it back down as far as it would go.

* * * * *

It was a sad state of affairs when, even in the grips of chills and fevers and an increasingly achy body, even knowing that he might well be fatally ill, Q’s biggest complaint (excepting his absent boyfriend) was that he couldn’t find a comfortable position to work in.

He’d nearly died before, after all. Most noticeably the incident where he’d stabbed himself with synthetic snake venom—that was a personal best—but also he’d had a knife pressed against his throat, been shot at, and nearly been garroted by a wire hanger (the mugger came out distinctly worse for the wear on that memorable occasion), to say nothing of the numerous times that unplanned explosions had gone off at the off-site MI6 ballistics testing center.

The reality was, even though he wasn’t a field agent, Q had had plenty of experience with death: crafting weapons to kill (more quickly, more efficiently, more quietly, always _more_ ), and then putting those weapons in the hands of agents who spoke death like a mother-tongue and slept in the same bed as murder. He had enemies (though many of them were now dead, by his hands or James’) and Quartermaster was not a low-risk position. He’d always known his chances were good of dying before his time, whatever that meant.

So he wasn’t currently bothered about his illness. He just wanted a goddamn desk.

But despite the amount of caffeine he’d had and the amount of work that he needed to do, Q finally succumbed to the creeping malaise overtaking him a few hours after the Americans left him to his own devices. He’d wound up sitting upright in the bed of the isolation chamber, propping up the pillows and backrest behind him, his computer on his lap, and he’d fallen asleep like that, head thumped back against the wall, dead to the world.

He woke up for some reason, though, and he couldn't figure out what that reason was for a moment—he wasn't cold, he didn't have to pee, no one was there—until he heard that noise again, a polite clearing of a throat, and he looked over to see M standing at the window, a finger on the intercom button.

 _Oh, shit._ Q sat up quickly, checked as surreptitiously as he could to see if he'd drooled, and then squinched his eyes shut at the sudden pain in his head from the change in position.

"Are you all right, Quartermaster?" M said, real concern overlaying automatic manners. "I can return if this is not a good time."

"No," Q said, "no, sir, this time is as good as any. Just—a moment, please." He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and rubbed, and the headache subsided back down to normal levels—the edge that let him know that his pain medication was working, but not _too_ well. He took a deep breath, and then swung his legs off the side of the bed, looking at M. "What can I do for you, sir?"

“You can tell me to piss off if I’m bothering you when you need rest, for a start,” said M with a faint smile. Q returned it, thinking vaguely of the opening ‘party’ for their new headquarters, when M had all but officially told James and Q to disappear if they valued their good humor before they got roped into an awkward conversation with the PM.

“Not dead yet, sir,” said Q dryly.

“Good man,” said M. “I came to check on you. And because I have a few items that need to be dealt with sooner rather than later.”

“Ah, yes.” Q thought about standing; he was in the presence of Himself, after all. He tensed up to stand, and then abruptly gave it up as a bad job when his skull told him exactly how much pain he’d be in if he tried it. “I’ve felt better, certainly, but it still feels no worse than the last time I got the flu. If you like, sir, I can have the relevant data from my nanotracker sent to your tablet.”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” said M. He paused, and somehow it seemed intentional rather than a hesitation, but nonetheless, when he continued, it wasn't exactly what Q expected. "How is Q Branch these days?"

"Fine, sir," Q said, although he wasn't entirely sure what M was asking. "Everything appears to be running smoothly."

"It seems so from my angle," M remarked. "Got a good crop of lieutenants under you?"

"I think so. The department shouldn't suffer any unnecessary delays of service while I'm ill, if that's what you're asking." He'd be out for, what, maybe a few days after they got the current scenario under control, he was sure. "And I'm not rendered unable to work at the moment, so I can keep an eye on everything remotely, sir."

M nodded. "Are you receiving adequate medical care? I didn't see anyone around—" He looked toward the doors on either end of the hallway.

"There’s a night nurse," Q said, "but I sent her off to see to her other duties; the overnight lab techs are only a few meters away and I know I'm on CCTV for at least two other people right now." He tipped his head in the direction of the single camera in the corner. "Besides, what I mostly need is paracetamol and, unfortunately, rest." He made a face.

“My understanding was that they had you on a regimen of antivirals and corticosteroids,” said M, frowning. “Paracetamol hardly seems up to the task.”

So he’d looked into it after all. “Antivirals, yes,” confirmed Q, “but I turned down the corticosteroids for now; if they start seeing anything that warrants it—if my fever spikes or something—then we’ll go into something more aggressive.” He waved his hand. “I’m fine, sir. Run-of-the-mill sick, as of yet.”

M nodded, his eyes not leaving Q’s face. “That being said, I’m sure you’ll understand if I ask you to designate who you want as acting Quartermaster should you become abruptly incapacitated,” he said.

M’s tone was mild, but the words still hit Q harder than he would have expected, like catching something that’s far heavier than you were bargaining for. Q stared at him for a few moments, and then sat up straighter, ignoring the fresh cascade of awful the motion engendered in his midsection. “I updated that paperwork just last month, sir,” he said, more stiffly than probably necessary. “I re-sign and update it every six months, exactly as protocol calls for.”

“Something I am both aware of and grateful for is your dedication to your job, Q,” said M steadily. “I still wanted to check with you verbally.”

Q pressed his lips together in a fine line. “Mark Stone remains my top choice for acting Quartermaster in my absence,” he said after a moment. “He performed admirably when I was in hiding during the incident with the Markhams, and he has proven himself resourceful and quick-thinking in times of a crisis since then, as well.” The incident to which Q was referring involved Mark’s family being held hostage by enemies from Q’s previous life, the one he led before working for MI6; despite his trauma, Mark’s quick thinking had helped Moneypenny and James locate Q when Q had been kidnapped, and was likely the reason Q wasn’t sporting an ugly knife scar across his chest, or worse.

"Tessa Finnegan would be my second choice, if something happens to Mark; she's a more-than-able manager and is knowledgeable in diverse areas of engineering." He was rather proud of his ability to keep his voice steady.

M nodded. "Do they know of their status as your seconds-in-command?"

"They are aware that I turn to them the most and they are among the most senior in the department, by responsibilities if not by years working in the department. I'm certain that both would easily be able to slide into a new role, should it fall upon them. However, sir, I wouldn't like to give up my job just yet." Q tried to smile, to lighten the tone a little, but it felt more like a grimace than anything else.

"I've been tracking your work for the past few hours," M said, "and I am well aware that you are still working above and beyond the call of duty despite being slightly ill. However, even if this were standard seasonal flu, you would still be getting more ill over the next few days, rather than less so, and if a crisis hits while you are feverish, I need to know that Q Branch will be up to its usual capacity."

Q slumped a little, chastened, and said, "I understand, sir." It was becoming more and more difficult to pretend that he _didn't_ feel terrible, that he didn't want to lie back down and sleep for another twelve hours, but truthfully, everything M said had been relatively gentle. "I'm sure that Mark and Tessa will do their job well in any absence of mine."

“If you have faith in them, I have no less,” said M. “I will consult with them both. There is just one other thing, and then I will let you get more rest.” Q’s eyebrows went up. M straightened infinitesimally; Q would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking for it. “The teams we dispatched to the three museums that have suffered break-ins have found multiple diffusers of the same make as was brought in earlier, hidden in the ventilation shafts of the buildings; only these have all been functional. The first one inspected was filled with more of that blue gel you saw, and it stands to reason it has live flu culture living in it. I expect you will receive an analysis of it once it’s come back from the lab.”

It was good Q was already sitting down, or else he might well have lost his footing at that news. He stared at M, who looked no more or less serious than he had when he’d first tapped on Q’s glass wall. “Is there any way of knowing how long they’ve been there?” he asked after a moment, grasping for the first question to come to mind.

“Not yet,” said M. “But we’re guessing the date of the break-in was when they were placed.”

“God,” said Q shakily. “That means thousands of people have been exposed.” His reeling mind flew to the Louvre, the first place Neal and his entourage had stopped; how many more museums had suffered similar break-ins but had gone altogether undetected?

“At a low estimate, yes,” said M. “The number could be in the hundreds of thousands at this point. I have already phoned the ECDC, the WHO, and the CDC. It’s as well you weren’t planning a holiday with 007 anytime soon.”

“Quite,” said Q thinly. His thoughts returned to Diana Berrigan’s blunt demand of M, which he realized hazily had been just a few short hours ago. She’d be pleased on that front, he supposed. Once she was informed, anyway. Q frowned. “Shall I notify our Americans? Or—”

“No reason,” said M, and gave Q a small smile. “Let them have one night of rest, if they can find it. I expect it will be a long time coming for them after they wake up in the morning to the news.”

“Yes, sir,” said Q, because he could think of nothing else to say. M nodded at him.

“Get some rest, Quartermaster,” he said, not unkindly. “Your country needs you.”

“Sir,” said Q, and watched him turn away. As soon as the chamber door whooshed shut behind him, he sagged, putting his face in his hands.

It was going to be a very long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For our American readers following along: ECDC stands for the [European Centre for Disease Prevention & Control.](http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/Pages/home.aspx) The Jucy Lucy is a [real burger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jucy_Lucy), and really truly delicious. [Surly Brewery](http://www.surlybrewing.com/) is a fantastic local brewery to the Twin Cities. And finally, if you somehow hadn't ever heard of it: [the Stand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand).


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which that which was longed for is finally achieved, and things are not what they seemed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AT LAST, ANTHER UPDATE APPEARS. Sorry for the long delay! This chapter took some extra effort to wrangle until we were totally satisfied with it. Many many thanks to our tireless beta Sail_aweigh for her feedback and help with this, and also to spinningdust for volunteering to be an extra pair of eyes for us as well. Please enjoy!

Peter left before the pizza got there, ducking back into his room while Diana and Jack bickered companionably about the proper style of pizza and method of consumption. He thought he should ask El and Neal if they did want to eat, but if they were still sleeping, he wouldn't wake them.

Closing the door behind him, he blinked in the relative darkness, waiting for his vision to settle; he heard a rustling, and then: "Peter?" Neal said, his voice sleep-graveled.

"Just me," he said, swallowing, trying not to be affected by the way Neal sounded when he first woke up. "Diana and Jack are ordering a couple of pizzas, by the way, if you're hungry." By then, he could see well enough to know that Neal had rolled onto his back and was propped up a little bit, looking at Peter.

Neal made a face. "I'm not particularly hungry," he said. "Maybe later."

Peter nodded. "Same." He padded over and sat on the foot of the bed, and said, "You better?" He sort of wished El would wake up, if she wasn't already, and take over the feelings business for him, but, well, Neal was his responsibility professionally and more than a little bit personally, so he could try.

Neal smiled at Peter, his face unfocused and a bit sleep-fuzzy in the half-light, but Peter could see him coming rapidly awake. "Yes," he said. "A lot. How are you doing?” He sat up, but not without a glance at Elizabeth, obviously trying not to jostle her.

Peter pushed his palms flat on the mattress and turned around, tucking his feet under him tailor-style. He wasn't sure how to answer the question; he felt better, insofar as Neal and El appeared to be okay, but he was still worried about Diana, Jack, Q, and Bond. But all that was fading rapidly in Neal's presence. "I'm all right," he said eventually. "I didn't get a nap but I'm not tired, so it's fine.”

"That's because you drink too much coffee," El said, muffled by the pillow; she sounded sleepy but pretty at ease, and both men turned to look at her as she rolled over. She smiled at them and added, "Someone ought to help wear you out."

She was still a little loose-tongued with sleep, apparently; Peter snorted and grabbed her foot, but he didn't say anything for a moment, waiting to see if Neal was going to respond.

Neal’s face split into a grin at El’s words, a faint flush spreading across his cheekbones. He opened his mouth, a mischievous look on his face, words on the tip of his tongue, but at the last moment he literally bit his lip and looked away. When he spoke, what came out instead was reluctant: “Well,” he said, fidgeting with an invisible thread on top of his pants, “I guess I should probably go back to my room.” He glanced at Peter. “I mean, if you want some privacy.”

Peter didn’t think he’d ever seen anything quite so—obvious and yet right on the edge of desperate. “I said I’d need help, didn’t I?” said El, because Peter had actually married a woman who was as sharp or sharper than he was. She sat up a little, looking at Peter for some back-up.

“You don’t need to go back to your room if you don’t want to,” said Peter. He would’ve very much liked to know what Neal had stopped short of saying, and he wasn’t sure if Neal wanted to go or not… but he was very much hoping it was a “not.” Very, very much.

Neal looked from Peter to Elizabeth and back again; Peter could almost see him start to slip into one of his many masks and then forcibly set it aside. “I don’t want to go, actually,” he said finally. “I was kind of hoping you’d say I could stay.” His eyes flicked to Peter as he finished, letting out a breath, as though those few words had been incredibly difficult for him to say. Peter rather suspected that they had.

His brain and his libido were having a shouting match, but at the moment his brain was winning, and Peter said, "Stay and . . .?" He trailed off, attempting to sound salacious, but fairly certain he failed.

El's giggle, instantly smothered, confirmed his suspicions. "Oh, honey," she said, contrite, and sat up, reaching for Neal's hand, giving it a little squeeze, before she smiled at Peter.

Neal had turned a shade redder at Peter's question, but relaxed a fraction when El touched his hand, and gave her a grateful look.

"Actually," Peter said, as mildly as he could, "I'd kind of like to hear him say it.”

Neal turned at him with his deer-in-the-headlights expression. "Uh—"

"Honey," El said, tone sharpening, "you're scaring him."

Neal's face changed from wide-eyed to guilty. "No, it's—I think it's fair," he said. "I should be able to ask for what I want." He looked down at where his hands rested in his lap, as if he might find extra courage there, and took a breath.

And Peter knew what the problem was, or at least part of it. "Neal," he said, voice soft. "Even if it's not the answer you think I want to hear, it's still the right answer, okay?" Because worse than _not_ having Neal would be having Neal only because he thought it was what Peter wanted.

That earned Peter a small smile, which was better than another freak-out, at least. “Okay.” Neal straightened, making a face, and then, with the concentration of a person trying desperately to sound composed, said, “I’ve, um. Really wanted to kiss you both for a long time. And—other things that kissing… often leads to.”

In all the years of tracking down Neal Caffrey, the time spent hot on his heels, facing him down in a courtroom, trying to forget him while Neal was in prison—even the more intensive time spent on cases with Neal, watching him charm the pants off everyone that moved—Peter didn’t think he had ever heard Neal sound so awkward. Shy, unsure of himself, like he did right now.

He smiled at Neal, the expression crooked on his lips. “Okay,” he said. Neal stared at him, his eyes impossibly huge, and Peter got up from his cross-legged seat at the foot of the bed, leaning over and onto hands and knees, his face just inches from Neal’s. And Neal, to Peter’s everlasting delight, leaned over to close the last two inches and kissed Peter with the most intoxicating combination of surprise and desperation. Behind Neal, El made a noise, muffled into her hand.

Neal seemed to struggle for a moment as to what to do with his hands, and then he reached up and cradled Peter's face in one, the other going to Peter's shoulder. He leaned into the kiss a little bit more, not pushy, but very—thorough, as though he was trying to memorize every single second.

When Peter and Neal broke for breath, gasping, El snuck in, putting her fingertips on Neal's cheek, turning his face to hers and kissing him. From Peter's perspective, it was obvious that she was trying to gentle Neal—and it was working. Neal sighed, melting a little as she kissed him, and Peter saw his mouth part ever so slightly against hers, shuddering slightly as El's fingers slid through his hair.

The few seconds of kissing before Neal broke away gasping stretched out for Peter like spun glass, painful and sweet and damn near overwhelming, and then Neal sat back, breathing raggedly for a moment before clearing his throat. "I, um," he said, and stopped. "It's been a little while since I've . . ."

"Yes, dear?" El said, teasing just a little, but her voice was as gentle as the finger she trailed up the appealing line of Neal's throat.

Neal ducked his head, heedless of her finger, and Peter took pity on him. "Well, it's been over a decade since I've been with a man," he said, "so I think we're even." Neal straightened a little, probably in surprise, but Peter distracted him by dragging his fingertips over the bare inch of skin at the small of his back where the hem of his shirt had risen just a bit.

“I don’t—” Neal began, and then El cut him off by kissing the corner of his mouth. He melted against her further, sighing deliciously into the shell of her ear as Peter watched, enraptured, still trailing fingers along Neal’s back.

“It’s fine, sweetheart,” El murmured. “Really.” Neal turned his head towards her, and Peter could only just see the edge of his smile before Neal kissed El again, with more heat this time. Peter had a fleeting moment of wonder at the realization that he was watching another man kiss his wife, something he never in a thousand years would’ve thought either of them would ever want, and yeah, okay, he _was_ a little jealous, but he wasn’t entirely sure of whom. Then he felt Neal’s spine arch under his hands, Neal pressing invitingly into his touch, and the abstract thinking part of his brain went abruptly off the rails.

The next few minutes were an enjoyable haze of kissing and increasingly urgent touches; it wasn’t clear to Peter whether Neal was being passed back and forth or whether Neal was the one doing the passing, and frankly it didn’t matter. Neal was a little hesitant to do more than kiss, but El made it clear that he was more than welcome by taking his hand and putting it right where she wanted it. Turned out she wanted it rather high on her thigh, high enough that Peter could see Neal’s fingers brushing the lacy fringe of her underwear, prompting a shaky groan from Peter and a muffled sigh from Neal.

Peter turned Neal towards him, irresistibly drawn by the feel of the muscles in Neal's side and abdomen under his hand, by the way they contracted as Neal sucked in air between kisses. He pushed very gently at Neal's shoulder, not to break the kiss but to see if perhaps Neal wanted to move things in a more horizontal fashion.

Apparently he did; a moment later, Neal was on his back, eyes still closed, still kissing Peter, one hand going behind Peter's head and the other reaching out for El.

El appeared by Peter’s shoulder as if summoned by the very thought; out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw her take Neal’s hand, and he got another good ten seconds of kissing before his wife pried him off Neal and was pushing him to one side. “ _Hey_ ,” said Peter, but El was reaching for Neal’s shirt, Neal watching her with a slightly dazed look on his face.

“I was thinking you might help me with Neal’s clothing problem,” El said sweetly.

“Protest withdrawn,” said Peter, and El kissed him. Then she turned back to Neal and kissed his forehead, stroking fingers through his hair as Peter went for the buckle of Neal’s belt. He hesitated, though, just before he pulled the whole thing free, and said, "Neal." When Neal's eyes focused on his, he continued. "Tell us to stop and we will."

"I know," Neal said, and his voice rang with sincerity—real sincerity. "Please don't stop. You, either," he added to El, who had pulled back slightly. She smiled, and leaned in again, as Peter finished pulling the belt open and went for the button on Neal's jeans.

Divesting Neal of his clothing took longer in practice than in theory, both because of how distractingly gorgeous Neal was, smooth skin overlaying sculpted muscle, and because of the way Neal arched into every brush of El’s and Peter’s hands against his skin, exactly like a cat eager to be petted. It occurred to Peter that Neal was probably touch-starved by now—four years of prison followed by a doomed search for Kate didn’t leave room for a whole lot of physical affection from anywhere. It was all he could do not to grab Neal up and wrap him in a bear hug at the thought. He contented himself with biting at the appealing curve of Neal’s clavicle. Neal made a wet noise and sagged against Peter’s chest, and a moment later Peter felt El’s nails against his scalp, her forehead resting against his temple.

Neal cleared his throat; the noise was enough to drag Peter’s eyes up from the heady sight of Neal’s erection. “So I’m not complaining,” he began—Peter got another thrill at the roughness in his voice, to say nothing of the fact that he was pretty sure he could smell Neal’s lust in addition to seeing it— “but you two are still wearing an awful lot of clothes. It’s kind of unfair.”

"I can fix that." Peter rolled out from under Neal and shed his pajama pants and t-shirt as quickly as possible. He dove back onto the bed and wrapped himself around Neal, skin-to-skin.

Time stood still, a hot, electrifying moment of sheer potential that sizzled along Peter's nerves and sparked everywhere that they met, from lips to chests to thighs; when it started again, he felt Neal gasping against him. "Back up, back up," he was saying, and Peter scooted backwards on the bed a few inches, a little confused.

"Jesus Christ," Neal said, and there was nothing but lust and admiration on his face as he looked at Peter, head to toe and back again. "Is _that_ what you're hiding under those damned suits? It's even more of a crime than I thought."

Peter squirmed, his face going hot, and El laughed. She was sitting a few inches away, having removed her cardigan but nothing else. "Maybe you can help me convince him to get better clothing," she said, and Neal nodded fervently. "But in the meanwhile, maybe I can have some help over here?"

"It's even more of a crime that she's still wearing clothes," Peter said to Neal, who held his hands out to El.

Somehow—and Peter wasn't really sure how or why, because it certainly wasn't the easiest way to get her clothing off—she ended up straddling Neal, who was on his back, propped up somewhat on the pillows. Peter was behind her, unbuttoning the trio of buttons on the back of her shell and kissing her neck, and Neal he thought was going for her belt and fly.

Turned out he wasn't, though, when El made a high, breathless noise in her throat; Peter looked down to see her batting Neal's hands away from her breasts. "Later," she said to him. "I'll put the bra and the silk back on and you can play all you want, but now it's naked time."

Neal gave a dramatic sigh and nodded. With his and Peter's help, she got the shell off; Peter unhooked her bra and slid it off her shoulders, being very careful to watch Neal's face as her breasts were revealed.

It was definitely worth it; Neal looked like it was his birthday, and someone had gotten him a Degas. Peter felt inexplicably smug for a moment; El was gorgeous and he was, of course, the lucky bastard she'd married, but he shouldn't really feel smug that Neal really liked her breasts. Nonetheless, when Neal breathed, "Can I?" and El nodded, Peter slid forward and pressed his chest to her back as Neal cupped her breasts.

She sighed with pleasure and let Neal play for a moment; Peter nipped the back of her neck and she shivered, but then she stopped both of them with a hand on either and said, "This is pleasant but there's still too much clothing in this bed."

"It's true," Neal said, still staring at her breasts, but he let her crawl off of him and stand beside the bed. El shimmied out of her pants and underwear with an enticing combination of efficiency and grace, and turned briefly to drape her clothing over a chair, giving Peter and Neal a moment to enjoy her lovely backside.

She turned back and stretched out next to Neal on the bed, Peter on Neal’s other side. “Did I win the lottery?” Neal asked, flashing a coy smile as he slid an arm around Elizabeth’s waist.

“I think it’s up for debate who got lucky today,” El observed. “But do you want your winnings in a lump sum, or annually?” Peter snorted, stretching an arm across to encompass both of them, pressing him against the S-curve of Neal’s spine and kissing at the back of his ear, earning a shiver for his trouble.

On Neal's other side, El was also pressing herself against him, and Neal was shifting back and forth just slightly, clearly suffering from the impossible desire to touch both of them everywhere at once. Peter obligingly slid a leg between Neal's, curled himself a little more against Neal's back, and kept his hand running up and down Neal's side, chest, and arm—anywhere he could reach.

Neal moaned, arching into Peter's touch and grinding his ass back against Peter's erection. El was keeping her hands busy, too; they met Peter's occasionally, as she mapped out Neal's body as well.

The first time Peter brushed his fingertips near Neal's groin, Neal gasped and twisted, trying to follow his touch, and Peter chuckled. "Something you want, Neal?" he murmured in his ear.

"Yes, please," Neal said, through clenched teeth, and Peter rewarded him by taking his cock into hand and stroking.

Neal gasped again, his head falling back against Peter, but he regained a measure of control a moment later and leaned forward to kiss El, who let out her own gasp. Peter lifted his head and saw that Neal's fingers were busy between El's legs, and he _hmm_ ed in approval.

"Okay, okay, okay, okay," El said a couple minutes later, her voice shaky. "I think it's—it's time to get this show on the road. Peter? Do you want to show Neal how it's done?"

"I can do that," he said, and let go of Neal, who whimpered a little at the loss. Peter backed up towards the headboard; El pushed Neal flat on his back, spread his legs, and lay down, her head pillowed on his chest. She held her arms open, and Peter knelt between her legs, leaning down to kiss her thoroughly before kissing his way down her body.

He knew every inch of her, knew her body by heart, and even if he hadn’t already been hard just the smell of her would’ve set him off. One of El’s hands went to his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp—she kept her nails short out of practicality, despite her fondness for shellac—and Peter kissed down from her navel, scraping teeth over inner thigh to make her shudder before exhaling a heavy breath against her cunt. El moaned, Neal’s groan of sympathy mixed in with her noises.

Peter opened his mouth and licked a wet, hot path down El’s sex, his cock giving a sharp throb at the taste, musky and salty and exactly what he wanted. “ _Peter_ ,” she sighed. He did it again, gripping the inside of her knee with one hand to brace himself, and then he started licking into her, the muscles of his jaw working, her juices smearing over his mouth, making him want to just bury his face in her and make her crazy. They’d been married over a decade and he thought she’d only become more attractive to him during that time.

He'd also learned what to do to string her out, to postpone the orgasm and make it last longer, make it come from deeper inside her, and that was what he was doing, pressing his tongue inside her, licking around her clit in circles, sucking gently, not quite hard enough to make her come but enough to build the need, let her get closer and closer until—

She jerked against him, which was usually the sign that she'd had enough, and yes, she was clenching her fingers in his hair and trying to urge him against her, more tongue, more pressure, more _everything_. So he did, dragging in a desperate breath before burying his face in her and sucking.

It wasn't more than a couple minutes later before she came, flying high, letting out a moan that was equal parts relief and pleasure. She shook apart under him and he rode it out, following her until she brushed her thumb against his forehead and panted, "Okay."

“I was gonna say ‘wow,’ myself,” said Neal. Peter sat up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand a little self-consciously, and was promptly distracted by the sight of a blissed-out Elizabeth with Neal’s arms wrapped around her middle, one of his hands cupping her breast. Neal’s comment was flip, but the rapture on his face told Peter the real story.

“Yeah, she’s pretty amazing,” Peter said with a grin. El made a satisfied noise, and Neal nudged her chin with his fingers till she tilted her face up to his, and then he angled his mouth against hers, kissing her warmly.

“Your turn,” El informed him, and Neal lit up like someone told him it was Christmas.

"Can I taste you?" he asked El, his thumb sliding over her skin.

"You could," El said, "but I was kind of hoping we'd get to the main course."

"Ohhhhhh," Neal said, and kissed El again, short and almost chaste, before glancing at Peter, who nodded. Neal was sliding out from under El and Peter shifted to get out of his way, when he froze. "Wait," he said. "Do we have—"

"In the drawer," El said, with a lazy gesture at the nightstand to her right.

"There are condoms in the drawer?" Peter asked. He knew they hadn't brought any; they hadn't used them in years, not since they'd both had tubes tied.

"And lube," El said. "I did a little shopping while you boys were at work."

"Always be prepared?" Neal said, holding up three fingers.

"That's the Boy Scout motto," Peter said, and held up two fingers in response.

"Don't hold those up unless you plan to use them," Neal said.

"Later," Peter promised. Neal beamed.

It took all of five seconds for Neal to retrieve a little foil packet and a travel tube of lube (the bottle was hot pink; Peter smiled, both at his wife’s taste and at the apparent selection available at whatever shop she’d gone to); he ripped open the foil and rolled the condom onto his erection as Peter crawled up the bed to situate himself behind El, pulling her against his chest. Neal looked up at them from under the fall of his hair, flashing a cheeky grin as he crawled up over El, kissing first El and then Peter.

El wiggled against Peter’s chest, spreading her legs invitingly. Peter felt the motion against his erection, and groaned softly, burying the noise in El’s hair. Neal situated his hands on either side of Peter's chest, up near El's head, and the resulting position put his face very close to El's, leaving him with hopefully enough room for leverage. It appeared okay, though, because he ducked down, licked a circle around one of El's nipples, and said, "Ready?"

"Oh, God, yes," she said, and her hand found Peter's and squeezed tightly. He squeezed back, holding on while Neal's hips made an arc, and both Neal and El gasped as he slid in. "Oh, that's good," she said.

Neal made a pained face. "This is not going to last very long," he said, as he withdrew slowly.

"I could not care less," El said.

Peter quickly found himself very glad that he was wrapped around El, the better able to feel every thrust of Neal’s hips forward against her, not to mention the way El tensed and gasped and moaned as Neal set up a rhythm, angling for the best position to make El writhe. “That’s it, Neal,” Peter said, hearing the gravel in his own voice as Neal’s hips snapped. “That’s perfect, you’re good, just like that, Neal.” Neal’s mouth had fallen open, pink rising in his cheeks as he panted, most of his face obscured by his increasingly sweaty hair. A breathy litany of “ _yes, yes, yes_ ,” fell out of El’s mouth, her head lolling against Peter’s shoulder.

“El,” Neal gritted out, “you’re so—ffh, feels so good—” He dropped his head onto her shoulder for a moment, and said, "I can't—is this—"

"Neal," Peter said; Neal lifted his head and looked at him. When Peter was sure he'd gotten at least some of Neal's attention, he said, "Come for us."

Neal groaned, low in his chest; El shuddered, and Peter stroked his fingers down her sides as they watched Neal regain his rhythm for another dozen strokes or so before it faltered. His body shook, nearly from head to toe, and he buried himself in El one last time, sighing her name on an exhale that seemed to come from the deepest part of him.

His head dropped to her shoulder again, and Peter reached up to cradle the back of his neck, massaging gently, feeling the pulse leap under his fingertips.

“I was gonna say ‘wow’ again,” Neal said, slightly muffled. He turned his face up enough that Peter could see his smile, equal parts embarrassed and delighted. “But I need a better word.”

“How about ‘fantastic,’” sighed El. She leaned down and kissed the top of Neal’s sweaty head; he turned to kiss her palm, nuzzling against her hand like Satchmo did when he wanted pets. El laughed. “Don’t get too cozy, Neal.”

“Of course not,” Neal responded, sounding slightly huffy.

“If you’re tired—” Peter began.

“Not too tired,” Neal cut in immediately.

“That settles it,” El said, before Peter could raise another objection that he really, really didn’t actually mean. She placed a hand under Neal’s shoulder, guiding him out of her and into a seated position. Neal slid off the bed to dispose of the condom; for a moment he stumbled, wobbly on his long legs like a new colt, and Peter’s chest contracted with such a painful throb of affection that it left him weak.

Neal made it back on the bed, sprawled half across El, and panted for a moment, a grin on his face. "Maybe a moment?" he said to Peter.

Peter reached down and brushed his hair back from his face. "As long as you need," he said.

Neal closed his eyes for a minute—Peter probably could have counted off the seconds if he'd bothered—and then opened them, wide and so, so blue. "Okay," he said. "Can I—?" His eyes dropped to Peter's lap.

"You can," Peter said, "if you want that instead."

"No," Neal said immediately. "No, I want you to—but I also want to . . ." He trailed off.

"Next time," Peter said, and his cock throbbed at the thought of a _next time_. "Come here," he said, and maneuvered Neal onto his side, head in Peter's lap. "El, you want to lend a hand?"

"Yes, please," she said, and leaned over to grab the lube, coating her fingers.

Peter didn’t know which he wanted to watch more: El working her fingers into Neal’s ass, obscured as his view was, or Neal’s face as she did it. He wound up mostly watching Neal, which was gratifying on a number of levels. Neal’s mouth fell open as she worked, Neal’s hand clutching the meat of Peter’s thigh just above his knee; his eyelids fluttered as she did something with her hand, and he moaned, jerking a little against Peter’s leg. El twisted her hand against Neal’s ass, and he let out a breathy “ _oh_ ” that went straight to Peter’s cock.

“If I didn’t know better I’d—nngh… think you’d done this before,” Neal managed, face slack. Peter was pretty sure Neal wasn’t thinking below the very surface of anything right now. He was _gorgeous_.

“What makes you think I haven’t?” El said lightly. She flashed a smile at Peter, sweet as it was wicked; Neal shuddered against Peter’s thigh, staring up at him in shock.

“Oh,” he said again, like someone had just told him the secret of life. “Ohhhh.”

Peter nodded, one side of his mouth quirking up. He really didn't get to surprise Neal all that often, and now twice in one evening. He covered Neal's hand on his thigh with his and squeezed. Neal's fingers turned under his and he clung to Peter's hand as he shook under El's ministrations.

"Oh, God," Neal gasped a couple minutes later. "I'm ready, really ready."

Peter had been watching his face, and Neal hadn't winced even as El added more fingers, but he still looked at El for confirmation. She nodded, and he mouthed _Thank you_ at her.

"My pleasure," she said, and he could tell she meant it.

Neal whined a little when El pulled her fingers out of him, but rolled onto his back when Peter touched his shoulder. _Oh, God._ Neal was going to be the death of him, Peter thought as he reached over to grab a condom and the lube.

El must’ve been able to read something of that in his face, because she took a moment to wrap her arms around his shoulders and kiss him warmly on the mouth, Peter’s hands hovering on Neal’s hips. “Breathe, honey,” she murmured, and smiled against his lips.

“I love you,” he said, because nothing else that came to mind was nearly as important.

“Love you too,” she said simply, and settled on the bed next to Neal, spooning him from one side. He relaxed as soon as she touched him, a sweet flush of arousal spread up his body from navel to throat, written out like a book for Peter to read. Peter took a deep breath, sheathing and lubing himself with hands that gave a slight tremble. Then Neal was spreading his legs open in invitation, grabbing the backs of his thighs just under his knees with both hands, and Peter pressed in, bending over Neal with a groan.

There were a few long seconds where Peter had to think awfully hard about economics postulates and Miranda rights, and then he had control of himself again, but Neal felt _so good_ , tight and hot and slick. Neal shuddered under him, and there was El’s hand on Peter’s shoulder, feather-light and yet the source of all his strength.

He cupped one hand around Neal's thigh, encouraging Neal to wrap his legs around Peter, and said, "You ready?"

Neal nodded, a little bit jerky, and said, "Yes, oh, please, now, Peter."

And hearing Neal ask for it, ask him for something in bed, made a knot form in Peter's chest just under his breastbone. He leaned down; Neal was too tall and the angle was wrong to kiss him, but Neal seemed to know what he was trying for and curled his head and shoulders up to meet Peter. The kiss was sloppy and off-center; Peter put all the intensity he could into it anyway, and Neal returned it, in equal measure.

Peter broke the kiss only to pull out, slowly, feeling every inch of Neal sliding against every inch of him, and pushed back in, watching Neal bite his lip and squeeze his eyes shut. "Faster, please," Neal said, his voice tight.

"Patience," Peter said, although he did pick his speed up a little, helpless to do anything else.

“Yeah, not much of that left,” murmured El, and Peter laughed, the noise sticking hoarse in his throat.

“That’s enough from the peanut gallery,” he told her, and she hid her grin against Neal’s shoulder as Peter set up a rhythm.

If Peter hadn’t had a little of his own experience to compare to, he’d have been more worried that Neal wasn’t enjoying this, because he wasn’t hard, but then again even a man Neal’s age needed a little time to regroup. And if the noises Neal was making were anything to go by—the way he was clinging to Peter and rocking up against him, gasping and moaning every time he slid in at just the right angle, the breathless words of encouragement—then he was loving this as much as Peter was, and that in and of itself was enough to spur Peter on, his hips moving faster as he pressed Neal into the bed. “Peter,” Neal gasped, and then a wet“ _Elizabeth_!” a moment later, small fingers reaching down to where Peter’s cock sank into Neal’s taut body, teasing at the spot where they joined.

“Oh, god, El,” Peter groaned, his hips stuttering as a thrill of lust went down his spine. El looked up at him with dark eyes, her slender framed tucked against Neal’s shoulder, and then Neal was turning his face towards her, blindly seeking a kiss, and the sight of El crushing her mouth against Neal’s was enough to have Peter slamming in again, love and desire twining hot through his stomach.

He wasn't going to last very much longer, he didn't think, but he still had a little control, a very little, enough that he could hang on, just a bit longer, see if he could make Neal beg again—

And he did. "God, Peter, _please_ ," Neal said, breaking the kiss with El with a gasp. "Don't make me wait, want to feel you—" He broke off with another gasp and sealed his lips against El's again, as if he needed her like air, like Peter needed them both. A moment later he pulled away and said, "Want to see you," and that was it.

Peter dug his fingers into the mattress and pushed himself up a couple inches higher for more leverage, thrusting in hard, shifting Neal on the bed slightly. Neal's cries—entirely of pleasure—just spurred him on, faster and harder and more intense, seeking his release in the heat of Neal's body. He looked up at them, and El's face was right next to Neal's, watching him, just as intently as Neal was. Peter's gaze fell to Neal's next and that—that was what undid him.

He closed his eyes and buried himself in Neal one last time, shaking with a release that seemed to come from his entire body all at once. His mind went blank for several long, sweet seconds, and then Peter all but collapsed, catching himself painfully with his arms before lowering himself to Neal’s body, panting.

Two pairs of hands stroked over his face, caressing his shoulders and neck. Peter shut his eyes, listening to the staccato beat of Neal’s heart against his ears as his own breathing evened out. “Think I could sleep for a week,” he mumbled.

“Not till you let me wipe you off first, you won’t,” said El from somewhere above him.

“Can I also sign up for that option?” said Neal weakly.

“I can probably be persuaded,” El said, and her voice said she was smiling.

Peter chuckled, and then forced himself to pry his eyes open; if he wasn’t careful he would actually pass out right here on Neal’s chest, despite his best intentions. El teased him mercilessly about his embarrassing tendency to conk out immediately post-coitus, and despite all his best attempts to train himself out of it he couldn’t seem to shake the habit.

He withdrew from Neal, one hand on the condom, and rolled onto his back, letting El deal with the condom once he'd taken it off. She came back with a handful of tissues and wiped him off, as well as Neal, before throwing the tissues in the trash and curling back up on the bed. By then, Peter was all but asleep, only faintly aware of El on the edge of his consciousness.

Neal was a long line of heat on his left side, and he felt El climb into the bed on Neal's far side; the two people he loved best in the world were here, and safe, and he could sleep.

In a few hours, Neal would have to return to his own bedroom, but for now, they were all together, and Peter succumbed to the intoxicating darkness.

* * * * *

Q couldn’t sleep.

He tossed and turned, restless in the dark on his wretched excuse for a bed, by turns too hot and too cold. His skin ached, like a full-body bruise, and his throat was sore from a steadily-worsening cough, to the point that it felt as though the lining of his trachea had been scraped bloody with sandpaper. He’d taken more of the glorified cold medication the techs had left for him, and another dose of antiviral, but at the moment he was as miserable and lonely as it was possible to be while not actually in prison.

Getting up and working on the computer again was becoming increasingly more appealing, but it was a sign of how genuinely shit he felt that Q couldn’t yet summon the energy to return to work. He rolled onto his back, letting out a noisy, frustrated exhale, staring at the ceiling. He wondered how much longer it’d be before someone would appear that he could persuade to bring him some fucking tea or coffee.

Apparently not much longer. "Q."

He jerked upright as if someone had scalded him, his breath rasping harsh and audible in the silence. "James?" Of course it was, and Q could see him sitting on the counter in the antechamber, next to the sink, in profile to the window. Q rubbed at his face and grunted. "Fuck. How long have you been here?"

"Not long," James said lightly, and Q could tell he was lying, or at least being evasive. Hopefully less than an hour, Q thought.

"You should've said something sooner," he said waspishly, swinging his legs off the edge of the gurney. He took his time getting up, having learned his lesson the last time, and dragged the crappy blankets off with him as he went to sit on the stool by the window so he could see James properly despite the darkness. "You should be asleep." He almost didn’t bother with this last; neither he nor James often bothered observing ‘shouldn’ts.’

"I didn't want to wake you," James said, and flicked on a small light, one next to the mirror, that bathed him in golden warmth. "Do you need anything?”

Q sighed. “Honestly, the only thing that sounds good is laying in the bath for an hour or so.” He tugged the blankets a little more tightly around his shoulders as he added, “Moneypants got me some real clothes and a few other things already.” He couldn’t quite keep the note of reproof out of his voice. But he’d been waiting _hours_ for James to come see him, goddammit.

“Well, I don't think I can help with that, unfortunately.” James fidgeted—just a slight tapping of his foot against the floor, faint but telling in a man whose continued survival often depended on his self-control. “That cough of yours doesn’t sound good,” he said, voice not quite flat.

Ah. “It doesn't feel too good, either, but I've still been sicker before,” noted Q. “My biometrics are all within previous established safe parameters for average spring influenza. The nanotracker’s coming in handy after all.”

"Oh." James tapped his toe again, just once, and then said, "That's good, right? I mean." His lips twisted to the side, in what certainly wasn't a smile but what was probably supposed to be one. "Better than synthetic snake venom."

Q managed his own small smile in return, but doubted it looked any happier. "Or my reaction to chloroform." He leaned his forehead against the glass with a small _thunk_. "Has M said anything to you? Since the briefing." He wondered if James had heard about finding the new boxes yet.

"Ah, no." James cleared his throat. "I've been, well, avoiding him." He twisted his lips again.

"He's in good company, then, as you've been avoiding pretty much everyone." Q sighed. "They found more of those boxes at all the museums. Analysis has yet to come back on how active they've been, but M has already called the WHO and ECDC. We're looking at pandemic quarantine measures in the morning. Well, later in the morning."

“I'm not surprised,” said James, and gave a long sigh of his own. “That will make things a little difficult for the Americans.”

Q made a face. “I suppose,” he said. “Shit trip for all of them, that's for certain.” He stared past James, out the window down the still-dark corridor into Q Branch, chewing his lower lip distractedly. “I should get back to work,” he said, reluctant. “I'm making progress on finding this Alastair Thompson character, but his last known location was... some time ago, and he's not left much of a trail since then.”

At this, James finally stirred, more color coming into his voice than Q had yet heard. “I've got a contact in Ankara that I've asked for information. I haven't heard back from him, but I'll go rattle his cage. But it's not yet 0600, Q. Even M isn't back at work. You can have another couple of hours of rest.”

Q reacted without thinking, exhaustion ruining his normal reserve. “As if I can sleep in this shit bed without you or Carly,” he said grumpily, slumping against the glass, cold even through the blanket. “I took some pain medication earlier that put me to sleep, but it’s wore off and I don’t want to take anymore and risk mucking up my brain when I actually need to do work. Bloody awful all round.”

"Oh," James said, and even through the tinny speaker he sounded a little taken aback. His face softened, and so had his voice when he said, "I'd bring you Carly if I could."

Q sighed. "She's better off at home; she'd hate it here." He rubbed at his face again, and then looked at James. "You might have come to see me a little sooner, you know."

"I didn't want to interrupt you at work," James said, and Q could tell by the look on his face that he knew it was a terrible excuse.

"That's shit," Q said, feeling no shame in calling him on it, but his breath hitched, and he curled in on himself, still balancing on the stool. A dry, hacking cough clawed down his throat again with its raw fingers, made him shake and pull his shoulders even closer together.

James watched him for a moment, his eyebrows knitting together, and then rubbed the back of his head. "Yes. I know." He offered no explanation, though, and just sat there in silence.

"When I'm out of here," Q said, once he thought he could talk without coughing up a lung, "you're taking me on holiday. You're going to use some of the months of paid vacation you've accrued and we're going out of the country. Somewhere nice."

“Yes. Yes, we will absolutely do that.” Some color came back into James’ voice then, like a man trying to convince himself of something. “Somewhere with sand and the ocean and alcoholic drinks and gourmet food.” He coughed into his hand. “Well, unless you'd like somewhere with crenellated architecture and twenty million art museums.”

“I dunno, they both sound nice,” said Q. “Though I'd quite like to see New York again, it's been years. But I'd be okay with other options.” He turned his head to look out at James, wanting so badly to go out and curl up against him that it hurt him like a physical injury, like a ruptured organ in his guts.

James straightened at his look, lifting a hand and then pausing with it hovering awkwardly over his lap before setting it back down. “We can do New York,” he said. “Especially now that you—we,” he corrected himself, “have friends there.”

Q laughed, and bit off the cough that wanted to come in at the end. “Oh, that'd be lovely. Can you imagine? ‘Hallo again, Neal, just dropping in to say hello, promise there's no more international incidents on our heels just waiting to traumatize you permanently.’" Q’s mouth twisted into a faint smile. “I’ve actually thought of something you could get me if you’re still inclined.”

"Yes. Anything," James said immediately, and then backpedaled a little. "Well, anything within my power."

"I want some bloody coffee," Q said. "Something strong. And some chocolate. Please."

James nodded. "Yes. I can do that." His gaze flicked up at the clock on the wall. "It'll take a few minutes, though—I assume you don't want anything found in a pot here." He stood, pushing himself off the counter.

"Damn right," Q said. He stood, too, which was stupid, considering that he still felt like warmed-over shit and moving was difficult, but it was hard not to, and even harder not to lean against the glass like some kind of lovesick puppy. "Thank you."

James touched the tips of his fingers to the glass very briefly, not even long enough to leave fingerprints. "I'll—give me fifteen minutes." He disappeared without another word.

As soon as James left, Q slumped, and then went to curl up in the wingback chair that someone had dragged into the room. It was stiff, inadequately padded, and not quite wide enough for him to fold himself into—and there wasn't a matching ottoman—but he dragged over a plastic chair, and made it work somehow. He was so bloody sick of the bed that the floor almost looked appealing.

Belatedly, it occurred to Q that he may have inadvertently asked his partner to commit a rather egregious breaking of rules. And while flouting regulations was an every Tuesday sort of thing for 007, this particular situation was not one where Q wanted James going out of bounds. He very much hoped James would have the sense to not leave the building.

It was close to twenty minutes when James returned, but he arrived with a takeaway cup and a paper bag, both of them with the tell-tale pink-and-cream logo of A Piece of Cake on them. “Dark roast with a shot of espresso and a chocolate-chip scone, plus a small bar of Green & Black’s milk chocolate, compliments of Adrienne,” he said. He set them all on the pass-through tray set into the wall of Q’s temporary domain, and pushed it through the small door. The vacu-lock system hissed as the slot switched over, and then the door opened on Q’s side, his stale little room filling instantly with the aroma of roasted coffee.

“Oh, god, you’re a saint,” said Q, tearing himself out of the chair and making a beeline for his prize. He paused as he picked up the cup, eyeing James suspiciously. “Where’d the chocolate come from?” he asked. “Adrienne doesn’t sell it.”

“Ah, no,” said James with a smile, if you could call the way his lips tugged up faintly at the corners a smile, “but when I called to tell her I was sending a delivery boy her way, it magically appeared. Saved me a second 100-quid tip for calling so early in the morning.”

"Good woman," said Q warmly. The delivery boy got rid of his ethical dilemma about whether or not to report 007 for leaving the building. Normally he'd comment on it, but he just didn't have any energy for snark at the moment, so he took a sip of his coffee instead. He moaned outright at the taste, the heat and the sweetness rolling over his tongue like salvation (James knew just how he liked it, two sugars, black), enough to start actual tears at the corners of his eyes. Good god, he _was_ far gone.

He took a breath to collect himself, and said, "The chocolate scone would have been enough. I'll have to send her a thank-you card." He looked in the bag and sniffed—still warm, probably freshly baked at this hour of the morning—and felt his stomach plummet at the idea of Adrienne and Jonathan getting sick, and their little girl, approaching her fifth birthday . . . He swallowed thickly, and managed a "thank you" to James.

"You're welcome," James said. He looked a little concerned, but settled back on the counter with his own scone and coffee—the coffee black and the scone probably savory, maybe some kind of cheese, but Q couldn't tell from this distance and it wasn't worth asking.

Q settled back in the awful wingback chair and reached out a foot to drag the rolling table towards him. He set down the coffee and the bag for the scone and sighed. That single sip of coffee made him feel marginally better, probably psychosomatically, but he'd take it. "Are you just going to hang out here with me, then?"

James shrugged. "If you want me to."

Q sighed, tucking his knees up against his chest, toes resting on the plastic chair again. "Of course I want you to, but it'd be a bit ridiculous. You don't have to."

"Well, I don't have anywhere better to be," James said, and chuckled sardonically. "Can't exactly shoot a flu virus."

“I'm working on giving us a target so that you can utilize your not-inconsiderable abilities, I promise,” said Q. A tone buzzed behind him, his mobile vibrating against the small bedside table. Q frowned; who would be texting him at this hour of the morning? James was right here, and Moneypenny would wait to speak to him till she was at the office herself. “Hang on,” he said distractedly, hauling himself to his feet and shuffling over to retrieve his phone.

It was a text, from his automated nanotracker program. Q swiped his thumb across the screen, a frown creasing his face.

 _Neal Caffrey GPS status change: Disabled_ , it said. “That’s not right,” Q said aloud. He glanced at the clock—still not yet 6:30—but after a moment of hesitation he pulled up Peter’s number and hit send.

“What’s not right?” demanded James. He was sat up straight now, his artful slouch gone, the deadly predator that always lurked just inside his debonair facade fully present.

“Neal’s tracker is offline,” Q said, just as Peter’s fuzzy voice picked up at the other end with a _Burke_.

"Wait, what?" Peter said, and before Q could repeat himself, said, "Hold on." He heard Peter get up and open a door, and then knock on another door. "Neal?" Pause. "Neal, wake up." Another pause. "He's not answering. I'm trying the door. It's open." Peter sucked in a breath, clearly audible through the phone. "He's not here, and there are—oh, _fuck_ —two syringes on the floor... both empty. And—" Another pause. "—Diana's fine, thank God, but Jack's gone too."

"Well, shit," Q said.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darkness falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! Personal injury & the 4th of July holiday took its toll. I hope the 9th chapter will please everyone who waited! Thanks for sticking with us! ♥

A couple hours after Q's phone call to Peter, a council of war convened. The conference room was not on the top floor of MI6's building, but it was still rather high up, affording a nice view of the city. The room was dominated by a wooden table, long and wide enough that reaching across it would be a problem; a side wall held a shorter, thinner table currently serving as a buffet with a carafe of coffee and another one for hot water, as well as a box full of tea sachets and a variety of creams and sugars.

The view was nothing short of spectacular, to say nothing of the excellent catering setup, but El couldn't exactly appreciate it, as, _oh, right_ , Neal was missing.

At one end of the room was a video screen, and at the moment that screen held an image of the face of the ill Quartermaster. His eyes were a little dull and his hair lank, but he'd greeted El and Peter with authority in his tone, despite the cough that interrupted his words.

On the wall opposite the food were more screens, four of them, holding the faces of others who could not be physically present at the meeting, either because of distance or because of the threat of infection. El had forgotten their names and titles almost immediately, but she'd identified them in her head as Not Helen Mirren, Tall Thin Guy, Chunky Jack Nicholson and The American. Around the table, physically present, sat Peter, El herself, Diana, M, Moneypenny, and Malhotra. James—well, Bond, she supposed; he was clearly working—was pacing by the windows, apparently too restless to sit still. As this was supposedly a meeting to determine what to do about the disappearance of Neal and Jack, she was a little surprised to see so many high-ranking officials, but she supposed it was all inter-linked.

Besides, it looked like they were pulling out the big guns, and she thoroughly approved.

Elizabeth held a still-untouched paper cup of tea in her hands; she also hadn’t taken a pastry from the cream-and-pink box on the table. The conversation had been going on for a few minutes already, minutes during which El had not once let go of Peter’s hand in her lap. Neal vanishing was the most crushing thing in El’s world, but the news of more diffuser boxes being found was a damn close second. Worse, it seemed that new boxes were being found in other countries too—the American reported that boxes had been discovered overnight in the Whitney, the Smithsonian, and a dozen other museums across the United States. Unsurprisingly, tempers were fraying.

“Agent Pfotenhauer has an impeccable record with the agency,” the American was saying. “There’s no reason to think that this wasn’t Caffrey’s doing and not Pfotenhauer’s—”

“Said by someone with no actual understanding of Neal Caffrey,” snapped Peter. “He’s a con man, not a terrorist. He doesn’t even like guns.”

“Furthermore, it is beyond Neal’s capability to fudge the signal on the nanotracker still currently in his digestive system,” cut in Q, before anyone else could get ornery. The screen display was so clear that El could see the fine tension in Q’s jaw, despite his careful reserve. “I designed it with his specific criminal history and skills in mind.”

“Have you recovered his signal at all?” asked M, and Q shook his head, lips pursed in a thin line.

“No, sir. He’s beeped in and out of radar a few times, and I have the location of each of those points on record, but he disappeared again thirty minutes ago and hasn’t re-appeared. My team is on it as we speak, but we have yet to relocate him.”

M nodded. "What about the syringes?"

"Two syringes, both empty other than the expected residue, were found in Caffrey's room," Malhotra said. "None were found in Agent Pfotenhauer's room. The syringes went to the lab. Q, do you have anything?"

"One of the syringes could have been used on Pfotenhauer," the American said, rather belligerently. El wasn't sure who he was; he wasn't the head of the CIA, obviously, since she did not recognize him, but he seemed to know the workings of the agency.

Q acknowledged the American's comment with a tip of his head; he apparently had everyone up on his own monitors. "It's true, sir, except for two facts: the syringes contained different compounds, and the blood on the needles was both type A positive. Pfotenhauer is on record as being O negative."

"Caffrey is A positive, I presume?" M said to Peter, who nodded. "Have you identified the compounds in the syringes?"

"One of them," Q said. "It was pentobarbitone. The other we're still not sure about."

"Well, that's fairly common," Not Helen Mirren said; El thought she might have been the head of MI5 but she also could have been a representative from the PM, or maybe from the WHO. "We won't be able to trace where that came from."

"No," Q agreed.

“I still fail to see why we are discussing a con man’s disappearance at all, especially in light of the developing crisis,” said Chunky Jack Nicholson. “We have much more pressing matters to attend to.”

“We believe them to be connected,” said M, and glanced at Q again to take up the narrative. Q nodded, coughing into his arm for a moment before giving them his attention again.

“Mr. Caffrey came to Europe to aid in the investigation of a large-scale break-in at several fine art museums,” said Q. “It happens that many of the stolen paintings were replaced with reproductions that were done by Mr. Caffrey at one time or another during the criminal career he held before coming to work for the FBI. We have subsequently traced the original acquisition of all or most of these reproductions to one Alastair Thompson.”

“Go on,” said Not Helen Mirren, her brow furrowing. The screen showing Q vanished for a moment, and in its place a man in his fifties appeared, showing both a side and front view; El realized after a moment that she was looking at a military dossier.

“Alastair Thompson,” said Q’s disembodied voice, “was a member of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment with many years of exemplary service. He was one of the first service members to become part of Joint Task Force Two in 1993, and he saw time in Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo and more than a half-dozen covert missions before being honorably discharged in 1997 and virtually vanishing from records.”

“I _do_ know him,” Bond said suddenly, frowning at the picture. “But he was a mercenary at the time. There was a job in Columbia—” He broke off, glancing at the others in the room, as if abruptly remembering his own security clearance was much higher than most of those present.

“Correct, 007,” said Q’s voice. “Further investigation has finally yielded a post-military career as a mercenary-for-hire, jumping from group to group. He worked mainly for insurgencies, rebel factions against corrupt governments. After one particularly disastrous incident in Sri Lanka, he vanishes again from any records that I can find. But I have traced a large number of shell corporations to a bank account listed under a previously-known alias of his, and these various corporations have been buying up massive amounts of munitions and other questionable materials.”

“Questionable how?” Tall Thin Guy spoke for the first time; his voice was high and reedy, his nose long and angular like a Hitchcock villain’s.

“Materials for building explosives, but materials also suitable for building a large structure capable of withstanding a nuclear blast, to list two examples,” said Q, his face re-appearing as the military dossier file on Thompson disappeared. “Additionally, the head of biomedical informs me that he’s purchased a number of items necessary for biomedical engineering programs, including staggering amounts of viral medium, similar to what was found in our diffuser boxes.”

El sucked in a breath, but couldn't say anything; she would have wondered why she was even there, except for the fact that Peter had rather vocally insisted that she not leave his sight. Since literally everyone in the country that he trusted to protect El was in that room, she belonged in that room, too. Sort of. She squeezed Peter's hand under the table and took a tiny tip of her tea.

"He has some known associates," Q was saying when she put the cup down. "Mayke Hamersma, Davi Santos Ferreira, Ha Jiang Li. Ferreira was reportedly killed somewhere in Syria recently, although I await confirmation on that detail. Hamersma is also a mercenary, although known as a munitions specialist rather than a strategist. Ha is a black-hat hacker, but she also knows her way around weapons and breaking and entering. I have been searching around to find out which bioweapons experts he has been working with, and I have a list of names but I am hoping to pare it down before sharing."

M nodded. "Does anyone have any names to suggest?" he said, aimed at the monitors.

"Mitchell Kronenberg," the American said, and thus began an argument about the current occupations of some rogue mad scientists.

El closed her eyes for a moment. This was so much bigger than her fear for Neal's life, and yet at the moment the only point of reality that she felt able to cling to was Peter's hand, still on hers. But on one of his passes through the room—he was still pacing—she felt Bond's hand on her shoulder, pressing briefly before lifting. She looked up at him, but he was arguing with M and the American again.

A loud beep broke the conversation, and El opened her eyes to see Q’s face ducking out of his screen for a moment. “Hang on, Neal’s tracker has just come back online,” he said, voice tightly controlled. “Give me ten seconds…. I’ve got him.”

El let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding; Peter squeezed her hand so hard she thought for a moment he might snap her fingers. “Where is he?” demanded M.

“An island in the Mediterranean, latitude 39.13006, longitude 18.753662,” said Q. “Hang on, I’m pulling it up on satellite.” Q’s face disappeared again, replaced with a satellite map of the waters of central Europe, a steadily blinking dot squarely in the middle of the blue that split the peninsulas of Greece and Italy.

“We’ll send a team for immediate retrieval,” said M, and for the first time El thought she detected a hint of some emotion piercing his stately reserve; he had stood up at some point, and was leaning over the table with his palms flat on the wood, the muscles in his arms taut like young tree trunks. He pressed a button on the flat surface of the table. “Tanner, I need a squad—”

He never finished his sentence. El saw it moments before she felt or heard it, an eruption of flame in the center of the Thames visible out of the northern-facing window of the conference room. Her scream was stifled by the sound of the explosion that arrived seconds later, muffled only slightly by the windows as the concussive force hit the converted warehouse they were in. Everyone leapt to their feet, only to nearly fall over again as another explosion consumed a point in the landscape out the western windows.

“Oh my god,” El breathed. She was shaking. Peter’s arms went around her, hugging her so tight she almost couldn’t breathe. Her ears were ringing; out the windows, black smoke was billowing up from the site of the two explosions.

“What the fuck is going on?” demanded Q, his voice shaking. “What just happened? I can’t see!”

Bond was staring out the window at the second explosion, his face black as the smoke billowing from the ruins. “Big Ben and the Millenium Bridge just exploded,” he said.

* * * * *

Q kept one ear on the scene in the conference room, but no one appeared to be injured, so the majority of his concentration was on the search screen in front of him. His fingers flew over his keyboard as he checked for information—news sites, social media, CCTV feeds: anything that would help him figure out what happened. He'd heard James's words, but he needed to see it; he needed to know what was going on in person, or as close as he could get from his isolation room. But before he could do that, an email popped up on his screen. It came from a restricted address, and he set a program without even thinking to trace it.

The email contained a link, and his sniffer program said it was just that—a link to a legitimate YouTube video. Well. He clicked on the link, and the video started playing.

It was a voice, electronically altered, over a black screen, and it said, " _This is only the beginning._ " A few seconds of silence passed, and Q thought maybe the video was done, but the slider at the bottom said that there was another couple of minutes left. " _Too long has humanity succumbed to its baser nature_ ," the voice said, and there was another pause. " _We will fix this. We will punish the lower instincts, and those who are left will rise above._ " The video showed a quick flash of a candle flame, and then ended.

Q captured the video and set a couple of other programs to trace everything about it, and then switched his focus back to the conference room, where everyone was yelling on top of each other. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, turning the volume up on his voice as much as he could remotely, "have you seen the video?"

It took another couple of minutes of shouting for everyone to settle down enough to _watch_ the video, and then after the video ended, there was more shouting. Which was lucky, because it took Q that long to notice the notes under the video, that said:

_There will be more explosions, every hour on the hour, for one day and one night. There is nothing you can do._

Bollocks to that. Either the terrorist (whom Q was already thinking of as Alastair Thompson, despite not yet having clear confirmation of his involvement) did not know about the tracker still broadcasting in Neal’s gut, or he thought the explosions he was setting off would be enough to keep everyone too busy to track him down. And that was simply not going to happen.

It was a relief, really. Now that there was clearly no more time left to lose, M—and by extension, Q and most of MI6—were free to do what they did best. This exact doomsday scenario had been one of the envisioned situations that had first ushered in the Double-O program, after all.

"Well," M said, into the relative silence that fell after the teleconferencing department heads left to go brief their own departments or countries, "I don't think we'll be able to go rescue Mr. Caffrey with guns blazing. It appears that defense is our primary strategy. However, we are lucky to have a class of agents that are specially trained to infiltrate, rescue, and assassinate as needed." M turned to James, who was brooding in the corner.

"He's not going without me," Peter said, and then hesitated, as if he'd spoken without thinking. Q was fairly certain he knew why. "That is, if—"

"I had been expecting you and your associate to go along," M said, interrupting smoothly and nodding at Diana. "And I will be sending a second MI6 agent as well." He inclined his head toward Moneypenny, who nodded back. "Mrs. Burke is welcome to stay under my protection."

Peter's relief was apparently so strong that he staggered a bit, grasping the back of a nearby chair. Even Q himself was rather relieved; a Peter worrying about El was a distracted Peter, who would only get himself injured or worse.

“I will have Tanner arrange for your paperwork and transportation,” said M. “Agent Malhotra, you have much work to do here, I’m sure.” Malhotra nodded sharply. “In the meantime, I’m sending the four of you down to Q Branch to be outfitted. Q?”

“On it, sir,” said Q. “See you lot when you’re through decontamination and briefing.” He cut out the feed, and immediately sent a page to Mark Stone, his second-in-command. “Mark, there’s a few things I need you to get me…”

He could do this, sick or not. This was what he was best at, his mind already running in a thousand different directions. His agents were going on the most important mission of their lives (and they were _his_ , Americans or not), and he wasn’t going to let a damn cough stop him from fulfilling his duties.

When the four got down to Q Branch some twenty minutes later, Q was waiting for them, still remotely; one of his minions outfitted them with their own trackers and various other weapons—guns, mostly—and issued them each a laptop and a mobile phone that would work with satellites.

“Be careful with that Walther, 007,” Q added, a note of grim satisfaction creeping into his voice. “I’ve taken the keyed palm-print a step further. If someone other than you tries to fire that gun, it will explode in their face.”

“And here I thought you knew better than to send me with your expensive prototypes, Q.” James was out and out smirking now; Q suffered an ache that had nothing whatsoever to do with sickness or fatigue.

“Yes, well. Apparently not. Do try to return it unexploded, that’s a good man.” 

Next they each got a series of prophylactic injections—tetanus boosters and the like—before the minion handed them auto-injectors in sealed containers, one per person. "Use these only if and when you start to feel like shit," Q said. "After injection, you will have twelve hours of slow-release adrenalin and other drugs that will help you finish the mission, and then your body will go into major glucose-depletion crash and shut down. So do _not_ use them if you think you have more than twelve hours of work left to do."

They each nodded, and stuck them in various pockets.

"Good luck, you four," Q said, although he'd be on comm with them any time they needed him. "Go rescue him and save the day."

James looked up at one of the cameras, and took a couple of deep breaths. Then he seemed to make up his mind, and strode off purposefully. Q watched him move deeper into Q Branch until he realized that James was heading for the medical isolation rooms—that is, straight for _him_.

The little voice in the back of his head told him to throw the switch and lock down the room, but a bigger part of his brain demanded that he do the opposite: allow James in. _Because_ , the voice said, _he's already infected, most likely. What's the worst that can happen?_

 _We both die_ , another small voice said, but Q squashed that one right flat.

A minute or two later, James appeared at the end of the hallway, and a few steps put him at Q's door. Q just watched as he threw open one door and then the other, and came all the way into Q's chamber.

He didn't even have a chance to stand before James leaned over him, seized his face, and kissed him within an inch of his life.

After a moment, he threw an arm around James’ broad shoulders and gave in, kissing him back, and to hell with who saw it on the security feed. Q let himself cling to James, trying to draw out some of that fathomless strength, that reserve of spirit that James never seemed to hit the bottom of, that saw him through mission after hopeless mission and somehow brought him back alive.

Finally, James pulled back, one hand still cupping Q’s face, the other on Q’s shoulder, regarding him with those impossible eyes, blue like the sky must have been when the world was young. Q smiled up at him, his stomach tight. Even through the horrible malaise, James’ kisses were enough to wind him up.

“I expect you waiting for me in Q Branch with a lecture on not taking proper care of your equipment, quartermaster,” James said. His voice was even, with just the faintest catch.

“So long as the most important pieces arrive back intact, it’s a deal,” said Q.

James straightened, hands going automatically to adjust his cufflinks, a faint smirk now firmly in place. Behind him, Q could see Peter and Diana and Moneypenny all standing just inside the doorway, an array of difficult-to-read expressions on their faces. “You’d better get going, 007,” said Q. “Duty calls.”

“So it does,” said James. He reached up to re-adjust Q’s glasses, sitting slightly askew on his nose, and then slipped out back through the quarantine chambers. It was all a bit redundant now, Q supposed, but it wasn’t as if James was going to be sitting in Hyde Park passing out his germs. Moneypenny gave Q a long look through the glass, and Q shrugged helplessly.

“Take care, agents,” Q said. “Godspeed.” Moneypenny was the first to throw him a salute, and one by one the others followed suit before turning and leaving the way they’d come in.

Q sank back into his chair, letting out a long exhale. Time to get to work.

* * * * *

Peter probably should not have been surprised by the ease with which MI6 got them out of the country, and yet he was, a little. They started in a car that navigated the light traffic out of London; the city was increasingly resembling a ghost town, with most businesses closed and only minimal pedestrians, even though it was nearing lunchtime. When they reached a small airport, a plane was waiting for them, weirdly squat and gray under the faint sunshine that had come out from between the clouds.

"What . . . is that?" Diana asked.

"Looks like a Warthog on steroids," Bond said, and Peter had to agree, although he wasn't quite up on all of his military aircraft.

"Yes," Moneypenny said. "It's a Q Branch prototype, of course. Almost as indestructible as an American Warthog, easily repaired, carries a massive amount of fuel redundantly, like a Warthog; can be used to mount an impressive amount of weaponry, but seats four."

"Interesting," Peter said. It was, sort of, but he wanted to be gone.

"There's a problem," Bond said. "Where does the pilot sit? I can fly a little four-seater prop plane or most helicopters but not this."

Moneypenny gave him an arch look. "You aren't the only one with flying experience, 007," she said, and opened the door to the cockpit herself.

Bond spared a moment to look impressed, and then shrugged and yanked open the passenger door. Diana got in after him, grinning so wide Peter thought she was going to hurt herself, and Peter climbed in last, shutting the door behind him. Their backpacks with their Q Branch equipment went on the floor by their feet as they strapped themselves in, Diana elbowing Bond out of the way to sit up front by Moneypenny. Peter stared out the window as Moneypenny got the engine going, the noise of its turbines filling their ears as they sped down the runway and lifted into the air.

It had been five hours since Neal had been taken. His nanotracker had gone in and out several times since that moment in the conference room, but his location hadn’t changed from that island in the Mediterranean, and their target was set. But that was essentially the only piece of good news they had going at the moment; Q kept them posted in text messages as they traveled, each piece of news grimmer than the last.

By the time they’d left MI6 headquarters, another explosion had gone off, this time back home in the states; Mt. Rushmore was nothing but burning rubble, as was the Hollywood sign overlooking LA. It was too soon to really know how many people were infected, but preliminary reports of frightened people flooding understaffed hospitals were already coming in.

“Mozzie’s going to be unbearable, if we get through this alive,” Peter said out loud. Bond glanced at him, eyebrow raised, and Peter waved his hand. “Neal’s friend, ‘Dante.’ The conspiracy theorist. Little turd was right.”

Bond’s mouth quirked. “If you say anything about a stopped clock being right, this partnership is _over_ ,” said Peter.

The flight took five hours, all told—not directly to the island, but to one nearby that was under control of the Greek government and who had agreed to let the plane land there. Moneypenny's flying was smooth, and after some initial discomfort with his mask and headset, Peter was able to lean back against the headrest and relax for a moment.

Well, 'relax' wasn't the correct word, but since there wasn't something he should actively have been doing right then, he could let his mind wander. He shied away from thinking about Neal, except to remind himself that he was on the way to rescue Neal, but El was fair game.

Before they'd left, he'd made sure she would feel safe staying with M, and she'd assured him that she did, so long as he would try not to get himself hurt out on the mission. "Be careful," she'd said, and he'd nodded, kissing her much like Bond had kissed Q in the isolation room. He knew the mission was dangerous, knew that there was a good chance that Neal wouldn't be alive by the time they got there, but with the flu spreading and all the explosions, he had to do _something_ , something more than sitting around holding El's hand. He wasn't an FBI agent for nothing, he thought. And everyone else in the plane was the same—or, well, no, not the same, he thought, glancing over at Bond. Some were weapons forged by the job, rather than chosen by the job. Nonetheless, he had to have faith in the four of them and their mission, or he'd break down.

Something in his throat caught, and he coughed as discreetly as he could—which wasn't that discreetly, considering the close quarters. Diana, seated to his right, looked at him, and he shook his head.

The tickle in his throat didn't go away, though, and he ended up in a full-blown coughing fit a moment later, his hands tangled in the mask, the oxygen not really doing anything to help. _Shit_ , he thought. _Shit_. Diana was looking at him again, and even Bond, in front of Diana, turned in his seat to stare at Peter.

"He's getting sick, isn't he." Moneypenny's words were not a question.

"Yes." Bond answered her anyway, and said, "Take the injection. It's only going to get worse from here on out."

"Not yet," Peter said, protesting. "We don't know how long this is going to take. We don't know how long it's going to be until we get Neal out." But then all of a sudden, his head started swimming and he got abruptly very cold, his teeth chattering.

Diana pressed her fingers to his forehead, and then her own, and said, "He's spiking a fever. This is not good."

"Take. The. Injection." Bond's face was impassive.

Peter fumbled at his pocket, where he'd stored the auto-injector, and Diana's hands pushed his away, pulling it out, breaking the plastic, and jabbing it into his leg through his pants like an epi-pen.

"Ow," Peter said.

Diana raised an eyebrow at him; even through the masks they wore, the message was clear. “Suck it up, boss,” she said, not unkindly. “Gonna get worse before it gets better.”

“I know,” said Peter, and gave her a half-smile in return. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do.

He just hoped his best would be enough.

* * * * *

By noon, virtually all of MI6 had tested positive for flu virus, and a few of them were even feeling poorly. The good news was that Q was no longer confined to his isolation room; it wasn’t as if there was anyone left to infect. He could now sit in a comfortable chair at his regular desk, surrounded by his monitors and half-empty bottles of Q Goo, only a few feet away from his vast flock of minions.

The bad news was that even in his own office, he was able to hear coughing from up and down the hall, because not a single person capable of sitting upright had been willing to go home and sleep. And, of course, what the coughing heralded: illness on a pandemic level. In the corner of his screen, Q monitored the headlines, watching various exclamation points scroll through the box. _Explosions foiled at Brandenburg Gate, Sydney Opera House, Eiffel Tower_ , one said; _Flu-dispensing boxes found in dozens of museums worldwide!_ said another.

On the rest of his screen, Q kept tab on a whole host of things: his own vitals, Neal's when they came in, the rescue group's progress, and his decoder programs, still looking for the source of the video and the email that sent it. He hadn't gotten anything definitive yet, but he watched the code scroll across the screen.

Unfortunately, it was all making his head hurt. He couldn't take any more drugs, not yet, but he turned the colors on his monitor down until they glared a little less in his face.

He glanced up as Elizabeth paced by just at the edge of his vision, Tanner at her side; M had assigned several of his own bodyguards to look after her, a more-than-magnanimous act on his part, all things considered. Poor Elizabeth. At least Q had tasks to occupy himself with, a meaningful way to proceed towards their common goal. Q thought he might go mad if he were in her shoes.

A buzzing from the corner of his desk distracted him; his mobile lighting up at the arrival of a text. Q reached for it, frowning at the unknown number; it looked to be American, from the country code. He scanned the words, and nearly dropped the phone. “Elizabeth,” he said sharply, and down at the end of the line of desks she heard him say her name and looked over at him. “Come here quick.”

 _Don’t hang up, it’s Nick Halden_ , said the text. Before El could finish crossing to Q’s desk, the phone rang, calling from the same unfamiliar number, and Q swiped to answer with a shaking hand. He didn't say anything and neither did Neal, but he heard a fabric rustling through the speaker, and quickly hooked up his phone to a cord, to route it through his computer and record the sound. He muted the speaker on his end.

"What is it?" El asked, very quietly.

"It's Neal," Q said, and heard her sharp inhale. He set his computer to deciphering the signal, and listened to Neal's muted footsteps through the audio for a moment.

And then an unfamiliar voice spoke. "Neal. You look better. Did you enjoy your shower? I have to admit, I splurged a bit on my own bathroom, even though it takes extra power to purify the water needed for a bath."

"Who—who is that?" El asked, and she sank onto the nearest seat, a plastic chair.

"I don't know," Q said, "but I have my suspicions."

"Al," Neal said, confirming aforementioned suspicions. "It was a lovely shower. Thanks for the use of it. And thanks for the suit, although I guess that was Jack who provided it?"

“Correct,” said the other voice, apparently Al. He sounded pleased. “Jack also tells me that you haven’t been displaying any symptoms whatsoever, so congratulations, Mr. Caffrey; you just won the lottery.”

Q glanced at El, seeing the reflection of his own sinking heart on her face. There went any hope that Jack hadn’t been the guilty party in Neal’s abrupt disappearance.

“Thanks,” said Neal again; he sounded polite, but wary. “I think. And while I’m certainly not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, I confess I … don’t really know why I’m here.”

“Good man, Neal,” whispered Q. By now a few more people had gathered; Tanner stood behind El, and Q suspected M would be appearing any moment now. Neal had no formal training for this scenario, as far as Q knew, but he was doing a stand-up job of keeping this Al talking. It didn’t hurt that Neal had gone for “charming” instead of “accusative.” And few people were more charming than Neal Caffrey.

"Ah, Neal. Neal George Caffrey. I feel like I already know you. I've been a great appreciator of your art all these years." And there it started, Q thought.

"Yes, I've heard," Neal remarked. "You know, I always liked that one, the Renoir you've got between the doors over there."

Q looked at El. "Does he have any code words?"

El shook her head. "Not any that I'd know about," she said. "Peter might have a clue, or maybe, ah, Mr. Haversham."

"Or he could just be trying to describe the room for us," Tanner said.

"Good call," Q said, and tuned back in.

"...the play of light on surfaces," Al was saying. "But I've always felt that art is a window to the soul, and yours—yours is so much more than reproductions."

El made a small, disapproving noise, and Q glanced her. "Reproduction is a different art than producing original art," she said. "He does originals occasionally, but his heart isn't in them. This guy, whoever he is, has missed the point of Neal Caffrey."

"Good to know," Q said neutrally. "So Caffrey has to be careful."

"Oh, well, I have done some original works," Neal said, and he sounded diffident. _I don't think we have to worry_ , Q thought, and grinned.

Their conversation meandered. Al (and what a delightfully plebeian nickname for such a monstrous man to want to go by, Q thought darkly) seemed to take great pride in showing Neal around his island stronghold, pointing out the defenses (which Q took careful note of) and the amenities he’d arranged for himself, showing off the various items of Neal’s work that he had acquired over what was apparently long years of hunting them down. In fact—

In fact, Q’s initial assessment of Al as a power-hungry madman didn’t go nearly far enough. He and El stared at each other in increasing alarm as it slowly became apparent just how enamored of Neal Caffrey this man was.

Or rather, Al was enamored of his idea of Neal, the artist and connoisseur who apparently deserved to survive the plague and …. Do what, Q wondered. Paint on command? Rule at Al’s side? He very much hoped not. Q was all too familiar with the unwanted amorous attentions of the criminally corrupt, but he didn’t quite think that was Al’s bent.

“I’m surprised he hasn’t asked Neal to pose for a photo with him yet,” El said darkly. Her hands were balled into fists in her lap, staring hard at Q’s black screen as though she could summon the image of Neal by sheer force of will.

“Yes, well, Neal’s hardly in a position to refuse him if he asks for it,” Q said. “Which is why we are playing some cards of our own. Ah, good, they’ve just come back into radio range, they must have just landed. Agents, do you copy?”

“We hear you, Q,” said Bond’s voice, restricted to Q’s earpiece instead of playing over the speakers.

"I've made contact with Caffrey," Q said, and he heard a strange, strangled noise over the earpiece.

"Breathe, boss," Diana said.

"Yeah, I'm breathing," Peter said. "Is he all right? What did he say?"

"He's unharmed," Q said, and heard a chorus of sighs of relief. "He appears to have gotten a hold of a mobile phone," he continued, "and he dialed my personal line and put it in his pocket. Now he's conducting a rather brilliant interrogation of Al, without the man knowing it at all. I suppose I have you to thank for that, Agent Burke?"

"I don't—I'm not—"

"Nonetheless," Q said, interrupting when he realized that Peter still wasn't quite composed, "I'm using the mobile's connection, through what looks like a private satellite network, to see what I can do about getting into the defenses of the island itself. Ah, and there—I have something—" Q typed furiously for a second. "And I'm in."

"Good," Bond said.

Q typed 'ls' and looked through the various portions of the network before he found the security cameras. "And I've got visual. Not of Caffrey, but I should shortly." He set all the various cameras to show on different portions of his monitors, and then took quick screenshots; he had a program that would piece them together and give him a rough map of the place. "I'll also be able to guide you to him in just a moment."

"Roger that, Q," Bond said. "We've just landed on the Greek island; we're about ten kilometers away from Thompson's compound. There's a man here who says he has a boat for us."

“Excellent,” said Q. “By the time you get to his location, I should be able to do something about the defenses and get you in unnoticed. Oh, and one more thing,” he said, glancing at El with a pained expression, though he knew she couldn’t hear the agents in Q’s ear. “Watch out for Pfotenhauer. From what we’ve heard so far, he’s actually working for Thompson.”

Peter swore on the other end of the line just as El’s face fell. “That’s too bad,” said Bond, voice dry as one of his martinis. “Duly noted, Q.”

“Good,” said Q. “Keep in contact, I’ll let you know if anything changes. I’m going back to monitoring Neal on this end. You lot stay alert.”

Bond copied him one last time, and then signed out. “I can’t believe it,” El said, though the tone of her voice said she was all too able to believe it, and wasn’t happy about it at all. “I liked him.”

“I did too,” said Q. Something was nagging at him, and he coughed into his arm, turning back to the display and punching a button with perhaps unnecessary vindictiveness. He let his brain float, sluggish with the drugs and aches of his condition, but it set itself to hacking easily enough, and it wasn’t for another five minutes of listening to Al’s increasingly disturbing monologuing that it occurred to Q that they had no idea how Neal had gotten ahold of a cell phone.

* * * * *

Over the many years of his time as a con-man and then con-turned-FBI-informant, Neal had gone up against dozens of truly terrifying people. Ghovat, Matthew Keller, and Vincent Adler had all tried variously to kill or ruin him; then there was his more casual meeting with the Markhams, back when he first became friends with Q, both of whom turned out to be far more dangerous than either Neal or Q could have guessed at the time. No two criminals were remotely the same, but all required a balancing act of caution and confidence in order to make it out of the confrontation alive.

Alastair Thompson reminded Neal very much of Vincent Adler: calm, intelligent, and capable of murdering his closest allies the moment they were no longer useful to him. It only figured that the man had taken a liking to Neal. He was just lucky like that, it seemed. But luck, charm, and criminal histories aside, Neal knew damn well that there was no way a cell phone had ended up in the pocket of the suit-coat he was wearing by pure _luck_ , and he wanted very badly to know who had put it there. He suffered the strong urge to pat his pocket, and only an act of sheer will saved him from it.

“So, I imagine you must be very hungry,” said Al. “Long morning, and all.” He was watching Neal with a friendly smile, the sort an uncle you don’t see often might have for you when you stop by his house on a cross-country trip. He wasn’t wearing at all what Neal would’ve imagined him to be dressed in, just jeans and a short-sleeve button-down; then again, was there some prescribed outfit to wear when you were out to murder everyone on the planet? Probably not.

“That sounds great, actually,” said Neal, after a moment too long had passed and one of Al’s eyebrows were creeping towards his hairline. Yeah, he did probably need to eat. _Clearly_ he needed to focus. “I’m spacing out a little, I think. Must still be the medication you guys gave me.” He smiled self-deprecatingly, and Al’s expression relaxed again.

"Ah, yes," Al said. "There's a lot of good stuff in that cocktail." He pressed a button on the intercom on the wall and said, "Chef, we'd like some lunch." He paused, and looked back at Neal. "Is there anything you don't like? You don't seem to have any allergies."

"No, I'll eat basically anything," Neal said. "I'm not that fond of lima beans, though."

Al laughed. "There will be none of those."

Lunch turned out to be sandwiches and various salads of the pasta and potato variety; the Mediterranean influence was in the feta cheese and kalamata olives present. Neal appreciated the freshness of the leaf lettuce on his roast-beef sandwich and wondered briefly how they got fresh foods before he realized he could just ask.

"We've got sympathizers in various places," Al said at the question, "all working to make sure our goals become reality. At some point, obviously, the food sources will be more limited, but at the moment, we eat fresh food while we can." He smiled, and it was creepy and menacing, but Neal forced himself to smile back anyway.

A woman came into the room towards the end of the meal; Al proudly introduced her as Ha Jiang Li, his second-in-command and head of security. Neal recognized her almost immediately as the woman that Moneypenny had chased across the rooftops of London what seemed like forever ago, but in reality had only been a few days. Jiang Li wolfed down a sandwich and half the bowl of hummus and pita in a very short period of time. She didn't say anything until Al asked her how for a status update, and then she gave a short report on the security systems on the island. Neal hoped the phone was picking up everything she said.

"And the latest updates to the door-lock system were pushed through last night," she said, finishing. "All reports are that it was successful, and we haven't had any trouble with the vault."

Al nodded. "Good. That's very good."

The door at the end of the dining area opened, and Jack walked in, as surly and yet commanding as he'd ever been. _Traitorous scum,_ Neal added mentally. Apparently Peter's initial distrust of the CIA agent—the _supposed_ CIA agent—had been spot-on.

Peter. El. He couldn't think about them right now, or he'd break his cover. He forced himself to keep eating, and listened to Jack give Al an update on what the scientists were doing.

“So,” began Neal, when the conversation unspooled into silence for a few moments. Three pairs of eyes turned towards him, and Neal did his best to pretend not to be bothered by actively focusing their attention on him. “In a question that will surprise absolutely no one, I have a burning need to know something.”

“Yes?” said Al. Jiang Li was watching Neal with outright hostility on her face, while Jack was just blank, but Al looked totally unconcerned. Neal supposed two out of three was better than nothing.

“Where’s the art?” Neal grinned, spreading his palms as Al laughed. “Please?”

“That’s the Neal Caffrey I know,” said Al approvingly. _You don’t know me at all,_ thought Neal, but saying that would be about as productive as kicking Al in the shins and shouting obscenities at him, so he let it go. “Come, I’ll show you. Much of it is safely in storage until the danger passes, but a few pieces of it we already have out and on display.”

"Safely in storage where?" Neal asked, as they stood and headed for the door. Jiang Li and Jack made no move to follow them; apparently Neal wasn’t considered much of a threat.

Al chuckled, and answered once they'd turned down a hallway Neal hadn't noticed before. "Don't worry; I enlisted the help of one of the world's best art curators to prepare an old underground bunker to be the ultimate storage receptacle. It has the perfect balance of humidity and temperature, and I've checked it myself numerous times."

"Good," Neal said, although Al hadn't actually answered his question. "I just—it's priceless art," he said, injecting some warmth into his voice. "I can paint excellent reproductions, but they're not the real thing, and I'm glad to know you're treating it properly."

Those were apparently exactly the words Al wanted to hear, and he grinned broadly. "In here," he said, and led Neal through a door.

They ended up in what was probably intended to be a study, but the walls were off-white, other than the paintings, and the floor had the same industrial carpet as the rest of the compound. There was a desk at one end, and two stuffed chairs, but other than that, it was as devoid of personality as a lobby.

There were six paintings on the walls, arranged mostly by size—smaller ones doubling up. Neal recognized all of them, of course; they were ones where the duplicate in the museum was definitely his. 

Neal let out a soft sigh that was only half an act. He approached the first painting, a Mondrian, one of his early tree series; he’d never been the biggest fan of this one, exactly, but Peter had often accused Neal of being as drawn to fine art as a junkie was to heroin, and Neal had a hard time denying it. He could feel Al’s eyes on him from one side, but for a few moments all of Neal’s attention was devoted to the painting in front of him.

“There’s something really spiritual about good art,” said Al quietly, from behind him. Neal kept his mouth shut, and wondered, vaguely, if the cell phone in his pocket still had any reception here. “At my worst, before I realized what I’d been called to do, the only place I’d be able to find any peace from the monstrousness I’d seen was to go to a museum and sit for awhile. Soak in it.”

Neal bit his lip, hard. It made him downright angry to hear that sentiment come out of this man’s mouth. It wasn’t right that someone willing to do something so _awful_ , so unspeakable, could feel the same way about something as important to Neal as art, but he did. “What… what happened?” Neal asked finally, turning to regard Al. There was no artifice in his voice this time.

Al stared back at him somberly. “It wasn’t any one thing,” he said. “If it was, I could’ve gotten over it. But it didn’t matter where I went, or who I gave my allegiance to—sooner or later the same goddamn thing always happened.” He shook his head slightly as he spoke, but his eyes tracked past Neal’s face, seeing something over Neal’s shoulder, distant and long over. "It's such a shame that a species capable of _so_ much horror could also achieve such sublime beauty," Al said finally.

Neal's heart sped up, but he didn't say anything, just made a noncommittal noise of agreement. "They seem to be the two constants in the world, but so divorced from each other, despite co-existing. Beauty, and at the same time and unrelated, evil." Al held his hands out as if weighing the two concepts. "No matter what, people betray their families, governments betray their people, countries betray each other."

“Can you really have one without the other, though?” Neal ventured, unable to say nothing. He kept his body language non-threatening, hands at his sides, shoulders relaxed, head tilted slightly to one side. 

Al gave him a faint smile, and then reached out and gently squeezed Neal’s shoulder; Neal felt the sudden and violent urge to go take another long shower. “That’s what we’re going to find out,” he said. “You’ll see. It took Jack awhile to come around, too, but Jiang Li and I helped him see the way out of it.”

“I guess the same kinds of things happened to him, huh,” said Neal, valiantly trying once more.

But Al shook his head. “Jack’s was worse,” he said. “Jack’s was—personal. Not my story to tell, though. You’ll have to ask him about it sometime, if he’s willing to share. He likes you, though. I knew he would.”

If one were to list all the things Neal wanted to know about their current operation, Jack Pfotenhauer's involvement was reasonably close to the top, but he shrugged and said as mildly as he could, "Yeah, maybe later."

"Jiang Li, as well—she has a story to tell, and it is brutal.” His face went distant, and Neal tried very hard to think himself invisible, not wanting to derail the possible train of thought Al was venturing down. “We’ve both seen too many good men die. I saw _my_ men die. Men and women who were depending on me.” He blinked, and straightened, coming back to himself, and Neal’s heart sank. “But we’re here to see beauty, not to talk about the horrors. This Turner is a favorite of mine." Al stopped in front of another painting, one that dominated the wall on which it was hung. "I believe you've painted multiple reproductions of this one."

It was “Mount Vesuvius in Eruption,” one of Neal's favorites, too; again he felt that wave of fury about having the same taste in paintings as Al, but there wasn't much he could do about it, so with an effort he forced it under. "Yes," he said. "I've painted it three times, that I can remember. One was discovered and destroyed, though, when it came through an auction house."

"Not destroyed," Al said, with a cat-in-the-cream look on his face. He might have said more, but there was a beep on the intercom unit by the door, and he went over to press the button. "Yes?"

"Sorry to interrupt you, sir," said a voice that Neal did not recognize, female, possibly Australian, "but the team of scientists who were working on the quick-acting antiviral have reported back that one of them made a calculation error and the entire line is now tainted and un-usable."

Al’s pleasant expression darkened immediately. “This is the third time they’ve failed to meet their project goals,” he said, and something about the clench of his jaw made Neal’s stomach plummet. “No point in prolonging the inevitable, it seems. Institute the Darwin Protocol for their entire group.”

“Understood, sir,” said the woman on the other end, and the line went dead. Neal was left staring at Al, who looked back over at him grimly.

“Darwin Protocol…?” Neal couldn’t help himself. He knew it was safer not to ask, but the dread was too much.

“Those who prove themselves unfit to survive the purge must stand aside,” said Al curtly. “Come. Let’s get you back to the main compound. It seems I must do everything myself.”

“Right,” said Neal faintly, and fell into step beside Al, trying not to betray how his fingers had gone numb, not even capable of holding the lightest of pencils. He slid one hand into his pocket, like a blind man checking a Braille map, telling himself that Q would’ve gotten at least some of this.

He’d been wrong, as it turned out. Vincent Adler had nothing on this man.

* * * * *

The cocktail Peter had injected himself with—okay, the cocktail that Diana had stabbed into his leg, and he was grateful for that even though he kind of wanted to write her up for insubordination—started working maybe ten minutes later. The rush as the fever lifted was almost intoxicating, but by the time the plane landed, he'd evened out a bit. Now he mostly felt as if something was just weird, but he couldn't tell what and nothing hurt.

(To be fair, he might have felt that way anyway: a short night plus air travel in a small plane plus the worry from the impending pandemic as well as Neal being kidnapped, well—Peter was surprised that he was the only one who'd needed to make use of the injection as of this point, frankly. He thought he might have seen Moneypenny swallow something that looked like a caffeine pill, but that was all.)

When they made contact with Q again and got the news that Neal was unharmed, Peter felt a rush of relief that would’ve brought him to his knees but for another assist from Diana. He owed her a _lot_ , he really did. But learning of Jack's perfidy—the stab of betrayal hurt more than expected. He hadn't liked the guy at first, but Jack had won him over in the last few days. "Good to know my initial feelings were correct," Peter muttered to himself.

Diana caught his words and gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze.

Agent Moneypenny was chatting with the owner of the boat, a member of some sort of law enforcement or Coast-Guard-type agency with the Greek government. Peter couldn't understand a word they were saying, and narrowly resisted making an _it's all Greek to me_ joke. Neal wasn't there to roll his eyes, and no one else’s eye-roll would do. He turned to Bond, who was watching Moneypenny and the Greek man speak intently, eyes narrowed. "What are they talking about?"

"I'm not entirely sure," Bond admitted, uncrossing his arms and shoving his hands into his pockets. "My Greek is, alas, many years out of date."

"Prep school?" Peter said.

"I expect that Eton is what you Americans would call a prep school, yes."

"Don't mind me," Peter said, feeling a tad inadequate and very profoundly middle-class. "I went to public school."

“I was thrown out of Eton for unruly behavior after a year and a half,” noted Bond, and Peter instantly felt a little better, though maybe that was the wrong reaction.

By then, Moneypenny was done, and she held up a set of boat keys. “We’re headed over, Q,” she said, one finger to her ear to activate her ear-piece.

“I’m ready for you,” said the quartermaster in their ears. “I’m re-routing the radar and security cameras on your side of the island for a period of twelve minutes. I’m sending the GPS route that you should use to your mobile, Moneypenny.” Peter spared a moment to wish that they had someone similar at their backs on ops—he didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone so terrifyingly competent at electronics as Q—and then reminded himself that their ops typically didn’t see them getting shot at quite as much as someone like Bond, thank God.

The thing about boats is that the smaller they were, the more Peter didn’t get along with them. And he was fine, _would_ have been fine, despite a sudden and unexpectedly intense bout of nausea, but Q broke in halfway to their destination. “Agents, since you have a moment, I have news,” he said, his voice clipped.

“Go on, Q,” said Bond; Peter twisted his head to look up at the other man, and instantly regretted the change in view. His stomach roiled threateningly, and he had to take a few slow, careful breaths to steady himself.

“I have intel concerning your target,” said Q. “Turns out the Red Regiment is not, after all, an urban legend.”

“Oh, god,” said Diana, at the same time as Peter heard Moneypenny’s sharp breath. 

“I don’t know what that means,” Peter said, trying not to be embarrassed about being the only one. 

“The Red Regiment wasn’t really a regiment,” said Bond, and there was something dark in his voice; Peter glanced up at him again and saw that he kept his eyes on the horizon line. “They were a Canadian special forces team dispatched to rural Guatemala as humanitarian aid in the wake of that quake that hit in... 1993?” He glanced at Moneypenny for confirmation.

“1995,” said Moneypenny. Her voice was tight. Peter had the abrupt feeling he wasn’t going to like this story.

“Right,” said Bond. “They were sent to help the indigenous population. Anyway, they supposedly discovered that the government was actually using the refugee camps as—extermination camps.”

"Supposedly," Moneypenny said, in a withering tone. "It's a given that the government was forcibly disappearing the indigenous population throughout the entire civil war. The only question is whether the Red Regiment discovered it or not."

“Well, whether they did or not,” Q said, “the entire regiment was killed to keep the cover. Well, all but one, it seems.”

“Oh,” Peter said, but he could barely hear himself over the ringing in his ears and the pounding of his heart. He staggered over to the side of the boat and emptied the contents of his stomach into the water, dry-heaving after the first round.

A hand touched his back and then handed him a handkerchief; Bond, unsurprisingly. Peter took it with the closest to a smile that he could manage, and used it to wipe off his mouth. “Why did I never hear about this?” he asked.

“Because the US was the one to pressure the Canadian government into keeping their silence, so as not to block the peace agreement in Guatemala the UN negotiated two years later,” Moneypenny said grimly. “The greater good, and all that. If Thompson survived seeing his men murdered, only to have his government wash their hands of him....” She shook her head.

“Oh.” Peter found he didn’t know what to say. He strongly suspected that even if he wasn’t nauseated, he still wouldn’t have found the words.

The rest of the ride was blessedly quick, albeit uncomfortable. Moneypenny drove, Bond waited on point with his weapon drawn, and Peter and Diana hunkered down in the boat as low as they could go to provide fewer targets for anyone standing by with sniper rifles. Peter wobbled his way to shore, still nauseated, and had to pause on his knees to make sure that he was not spectacularly ill for a second time in ten minutes. 

“I’m alright, I’m _fine_ ,” he snapped, as Diana bent next to him, her hand on the small of his back. “I just don’t like tiny boats.”

“It’s a side-effect of the hormone shot, Agent Burke,” said Q into his ear. “Forgive me, I should have warned you. Increased sensitivity of the inner ear for the duration of the injection.”

"Oh, boy, that's just great," Peter said, and then added, "Sorry, Q. The shot is working wonderfully otherwise." He spat into the sand and looked up at the compound on the island. There were three large buildings and a few smaller ones; the first and nearest them, based on the smoke coming out of it, housed generators of some sort. A second had the low, wide look of a barracks, and the third, the largest of the group, was three stories tall and boxy, with very few windows. The small outbuildings ranged from rickety sheds to small cottages, all incongruously made from dark metal, stark against the light sand and blazingly blue sky.

Peter felt a brief stab of satisfaction that they'd all changed into black tactical gear back at MI6; despite the color, it was a much better choice for the current weather than the wool or wool-blend suits they'd all started the day in. Also, it meant he had about twenty pockets instead of six or seven, all full of various things that Bond or Q had thought would be useful.

"Got the route," Moneypenny said, and held out her phone. The four of them crowded around to look at where they'd be going—along the side of the island for a bit, and then up between the barracks and the main building until they reached a side door, and then inside. "You have it?" she asked them, and Peter, Bond, and Diana nodded. "All right. Safe to go, Q?"

"Safe to go. There's a ten-second lag but it's well past that now."

"All right. On my mark—three, two, one, go!"

Later—much later—Peter would look back on this mission and be able to recall every moment with a clarity that was usually reserved only for special occasions, like his wedding day, and the first time he took El on a date. And there was lots to remember about that day: the terror of finding Neal gone; the horrible sight of explosions in London’s bustling landscape; the steady creep of the deadly virus through his system, threatening to shut him down before he could do what was needed; the slightly spicy smell of the Mediterranean air and the brightness of its sun, glaring from the sea and sand as they ran light-footed across the beach.

But the thing that stuck out most, when he looked back, was how Bond and Moneypenny were positively radiant with glee. Grown impatient with the wait, they were hounds finally set loose on the hunt, a deadly light in both their faces that Peter was very glad was not directed at him. At the end of the day, it was the biggest difference between him and Diana versus the MI6 agents: all four of them were patriots, all four of them serving a higher cause, but while Diana and Peter were here solely in the name of justice, Bond and Moneypenny were in for the kill.

They ran silent up the beach, taking cover in the shadow of a rocky spine that sprang up thirty feet in from the shoreline. Bond and Moneypenny leapfrogged in front, one taking point while the other ran further along before switching positions; Peter and Diana brought up the rear. They got halfway to the barracks before a shot rang out, ricocheting off the stone wall next to Peter’s head as they all dove for cover.

"Shit," Diana said, as they huddled together.

"Agreed," Bond said. "Let's break this up some. Q, do you have eyes in that, er, cottage over there? About twenty meters in front of us, a little south-east."

"I don't, but apparently that was used for storage of dry goods at one point so I doubt it's being guarded. You should be safe in there," Q said.

Bond flicked his gaze to Moneypenny, who nodded. "All right," she said. "We'll head in there. The door is on the west side, so head that direction. On my mark." She counted off again, and they ran.

More shots rang out over their heads, but they made it to the cottage uninjured. The door was unlocked and they piled inside as quickly as they could. Peter blinked in the damp, close darkness inside—the only windows were covered with black paper—until he fumbled a flashlight out of his pocket and shone it around.

It was a single room, about nine or ten feet square, with a line of boxes against one wall, and in the middle of that wall, a youngish woman in a white t-shirt and shorts, eyes wide with fear, holding a baseball bat behind her ear. "Je ne vous reconnais pas," she said. "Deposez les armes, et mettez les mains sur la tete." _I don't recognize you. Drop your weapons, and put your hands behind your head._

Peter's French was significantly better than his Greek, but he was perfectly okay with letting Bond handle this. In an instant, he had the woman disarmed and held securely but lightly. "Qui est-ce?" he asked, and Peter got that one: _Who are you?_

"Are you British?" she asked in highly-accented but comprehensible English, and Peter sighed with relief.

“FBI,” said Diana, at the same time as Moneypenny said, “SIS.”

“Oh thank _God_ ,” said the woman, and sagged against Bond, her chest heaving as she drew in several ragged breaths. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—”

“Shh,” said Moneypenny, not unkindly. Peter noted that neither Bond nor Moneypenny made any move to release the woman. “Who are you? Do you work for Thompson?”

“I did, before he tried to have me shot,” the woman said, flaring again with indignation. Her voice shook as she hurried on, “I ran. When we finished the work he contracted us for, he told us we’d done God’s—God’s work, and that we would have our reward, and then he lined us up outside like animals, and—”

“He executed the staff?” Diana cut in. Her voice was sharp. She and Peter exchanged a heavy glance.

“What was it he contracted you for?” pressed Moneypenny.

The woman drew herself up, having visibly to control herself. “I am a researcher from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris,” she said hotly. “My colleagues and I were promised state-of-the-art facilities and cutting-edge work on antivirals. We got samples of DRACO—”

“Of what?” Bond interrupted. “What’s DRACO?”

"It is a—a protein compound that has likely application as a universal anti-viral," she said. "We were able to improve it, make it specific to a strain of flu that he provided us."

"He gave you some flu and you made a cure for it," Bond said.

"Yes, that's right."

Bond and Moneypenny exchanged looks over the woman's head. "Do you have a—a stash of this DRACO stuff?" Moneypenny asked.

"There is some, maybe a hundred or so doses, kept in the main building," she said. "Also there is a document with the details on how to make DRACO and our changes to it—I hid it on a server. I meant to transfer it to a portable device of some sort and take it with me but until two minutes ago I thought I would be dying here."

 _She still might_ , Peter thought, but Jesus, a cure!

"Tell us the name of the file and where you hid it on the server, and where the DRACO is being hidden, and we'll get you off the island," Bond said.

"Truly?" she said, and all four of them nodded. She burst into tears, and Peter shuffled uncomfortable for a moment until she settled herself down. "Do you have something to write with?"

"Just tell us the path, the file name, and the password or whatever encryption you used on it, and we'll be able to get it," Moneypenny said. "Q, are you reading this?"

"Loud and clear," Q said in their ears.

The French scientist rattled off a series of letters and numbers that meant nothing to Peter, as well as some other statistics, but Q said, "A-ha!" in their ears, and Bond gave her a satisfied nod.

“Agents, that’s perfect,” said Q. He spoke quickly, words tripping over themselves in his haste. “I’ve found it, I’m sending the file to biomedical and our contact at WHO—but I don’t know how quickly we’ll be able to synthesize more of it, you _have_ to find that stash with the rest of the samples, there are already people on death’s door here. And make sure our scientist makes it out alive, we’ll need her to supervise production to expedite the process.”

“Got it,” said Bond. He turned the young woman towards him, his hands pressing lightly on her shoulders till she looked up into his face. “Listen, _chérie_. Stay here. If you leave this house without one of us, you’ll get shot at. We’re going into the main building to get the rest of the DRACO and then we’ll be back. Do _not_ leave this building. Do you understand me?”

She nodded, her face pale, her eyes showing too much white. Bond squeezed her shoulders. “You’ve been very brave,” Bond told her, his voice gentler than Peter would ever have given him credit for. “Be brave for a little while longer. Oui?”

“Oui,” she responded, summoning a faint smile for him. Bond smiled back and kissed her forehead. 

“I’m going to draw the sniper’s fire,” he said, turning to look at Moneypenny and Peter and Diana. “Get a bead on him and take him down?”

“On it,” said Moneypenny. “Don’t get hit, or I’ll come rub salt in it.”

“You’re a gem, Eve,” he said cheerfully, and drew his Walther out of his shoulder-holster, slipping off the safety and edging towards the door.

"There are already people on death's door?" Peter said, left in the cottage with Diana and the scientist. "Is El okay? Actually, for that matter, how are you even still functional, Q?"

"El's tested positive but she's not showing symptoms yet," Q said, and Peter breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm still not sure why I'm doing as well as I am but believe me when I tell you that the vampires have stolen enough of my blood that hopefully someone will figure it out."

"That's good," Peter said, and then he jumped, as did Diana—because two shots fired outside, and then there was a blood-curdling scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of notes this time!
> 
> \+ [Joint Task Force 2.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Task_Force_2).  
> \+ The [Warthog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Thunderbolt_II), which is actually just a nickname for the real plane.  
> \+ Nick Halden is one of [Neal's many aliases.](http://www.whitecollarlexicon.com/neals_aliases.html)  
> \+ The [Mondrian](http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/piet-mondrian/the-gray-tree-1911) on Al's wall, title of "The Gray Tree."  
> \+ [Mount Vesuvius in Eruption](http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/william-turner/mount-vesuvius-in-eruption-1817).  
> \+ The Red Regiment is a fictional event. The [Guatemalan Civil War](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Civil_War), however, is not, and neither was the [1976 quake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Guatemala_earthquake). We obviously took some liberties with the history and events therein.  
> +DRACO is a [real thing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO_\(antiviral\)), miracle of miracles. We sincerely hope that soon you'll be hearing of its use in local hospitals and not just in speculative fiction.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which time runs out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second to last chapter! Thanks to everyone who commented so far, and especially to you lovely people wishing us well (my injury is fine, it's just a grumpy knee). Just one more chapter left!
> 
> Warning: This chapter is somewhat gruesome and not without casualties. Thanks for reading!

"Double-oh-seven, _status report_ ," Q snapped into his microphone, as his heart jumped into his throat and his hands threatened to shake too much to type.

"We're all fine here, Q," James said.

The rush of relief was almost orgasmically strong, and Q rested his hand against the table so he wouldn't fall over. "Who got shot?" he asked.

"A sniper, identity unknown," James said, "but definitely not one of ours."

"Ah," Q said. "Just a redshirt," he said to the people who had turned to look at him when he'd said the word 'shot' earlier. "Nothing to worry about."

“Red shirt?” asked Elizabeth, eyebrows raised.

Q waved his hand vaguely in response. “Star Trek joke,” he said. “All of ours are fine.”

El nodded, offering a faint smile as she laced her hands together in her lap. She was sitting in a chair pulled up close to Q’s desk, one leg crossed over the other, trying and failing to not look totally eaten up with nerves. Q couldn’t help but feel for her; he at least was able to exert some control in this god-awful situation, and she could do little but sit by and offer witty comments. If that. There was precious little humor left in Q Branch at the moment, or anywhere else, for that matter.

"I'm going to do some quick recon—radio silence for a moment," James said.

"I read you, 007. Awaiting your return." Q took a deep breath, or, at least, as deep of a breath as he could at the moment; he did not start coughing, so he counted it a success. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes just for a moment, long enough to get a little bit of relief from the brightness of the room and the monitors, and then opened them again.

The room looked slightly alien at first, sort of like it did when he got new glasses. He hadn't, obviously; his old ones were still perched on his nose, and Q blamed it on the low-grade fever he was still running. It was somewhat disconcerting, and he shook his head. Spinning in his chair, he reached for the desk drawer. Maybe a stray scone had gotten buried in there, and wasn't too stale.

His eyes fell on a bright blue corner peeking out from under the pile of other things he brought with him from his quarantine room, and for a few moments he was actually too spaced to remember that James had brought him chocolate, just like Q had asked for.

James. Q bit his lip, hard enough that he’d feel it later, and dug out the chocolate, deciding there and then to have a bit and share some with El, too. Wouldn’t do to let perfectly good chocolate go to waste, better to eat it now while he still could, and oh right let’s not go down _that_ particular avenue, Q, don’t be fucking morbid, you git.

He was just in the middle of tearing open the wrapper when he realized that the bar of chocolate had been opened before—opened and very carefully re-wrapped, but definitely opened. Q frowned. Had James opened it for some reason? But why would he? Q pulled the wrapper open, the chocolate bar crinkling, and that was when he noticed what looked like writing on the white inside of the bar.

The first line was an address, somewhere on the west side of London, and the second was a ten-digit code written in pairs of two—probably a keycode of some sort rather than a telephone number. It was clearly written in James' handwriting, the slashing lines reminding Q of other notes he'd received from the agent. He paused for a moment, thinking of the gifts James had brought him early in their courtship, and then shook his head. Typing the address into his mapping program, he looked at the building indicated. It was just a building that held what looked like a number of offices, half of which were vacant. Odd.

He had no idea what the address meant, what the keycode would open, or what the note itself meant, but he'd go see what was there as soon as he could.

“Here, El,” he said aloud, turning around and proffering the bar of chocolate to her. “Fancy a bit?”

“Oh!” El straightened, and a real smile actually passed her lips for a moment. “God, you know what, that actually sounds great. Are you sure…?”

“Need to make sure we ward off the Dementors,” said Q very seriously, and was rewarded with a peal of laughter. El reached out and broke off a piece, and for a few moments she and Q sat and enjoyed one of the simpler pleasures in life. Q only hoped it wouldn’t be one of the last.

* * * * *

Peter's heart had been in his throat until he heard Bond confirm over the comms that only the sniper was dead; he relaxed only fractionally after it, because one sniper down didn't mean there weren't dozens they couldn't see. But he couldn't think about that right now. Bond trusted Q to keep them safe, so at the moment all he could do was believe in that, and concentrate on the task at hand. He and Diana had darted out from cover to follow the path that Q had sent them earlier, and all four met up together just inside the door to the main building. "Now what?" he mouthed at Bond, who shook his head, raising a finger.

Bond tapped his earpiece again, a couple times—apparently Q was busy with something, but then Q's voice came over the comms to all of them. "All right, agents," he said, "it's a little complicated to get to the main room, where Caffrey is being held, and I'm still not entirely clear on the location of the DRACO stash. I'll get that to you as soon as I can figure it out. In the meanwhile, I'll guide you through the compound as best I can."

Bond tapped his ear twice in acknowledgment, and they took a left turn at Q's direction.

They made their way stealthily through the compound, passing a number of things that made Peter feel like they were walking through the remains of a horror movie set. Their path led them through a yard with lots of freshly-turned dirt, only slightly dampened by recent rain; small flat stones with nothing but numbers on them stood at the head of each mound of dirt, and Peter realized as his stomach lurched that the little stones must be grave markers. 

The next bunker revealed itself to be a complex of empty apartments, most of which were still strewn with personal belongings. One room actually contained a half-completed painting, a now-dried-up platter of mixed paints still sitting out next to the easel. Peter had to stand in the doorway for several seconds fighting a nasty wave of nausea, until Diana touched his shoulder and observed that Neal would sooner paint using his own urine than touch paints of that quality, and finally Peter was able to make the mental break and turn away—but not without taking a long breath. The same building contained a large, military-style mess hall with an attached kitchen area, and this at least was still hospital-grade clean. Peter wondered, dimly, how many people still used it. 

The last building they passed was the worst, though Peter hadn’t thought it possible to beat that desolate little graveyard. The large, squat structure looked like nothing more than a glorified containment area, and when they looked inside to confirm, they saw cells sealed off behind thick walls of shatter-proof glass, with ventilation windows built into each wall. Every cell had a biohazard sign on its door, and more than one still had charts in the patient information slots, with names, numbers, and what was clearly the date of death; more than a few also had “TEST UNSUCCESSFUL” in large black letters stamped across its chart. 

They had just gotten to another branching outdoor walkway, covered by more of those neutral red-brown bricks—Peter suspect they were meant to camouflage the walkways from aerial reconnaissance—when a pair of guards came into view, marching past in lock-step with guns held across their chests, both of them with a thousand-yard stare and the slightly tensed posture of men on watch. As a group, they ducked below a half-finished (or half-demolished, Peter couldn’t tell) brick wall. Bond looked over the wall and raised his gun to aim, but Moneypenny reached out a hand to his shoulder with a faint _wait_ , and then Peter saw why; the second man was speaking into a radio.

Damn. If they shot either of the guards, an alarm would be raised instantly. Peter watched Bond go around the corner, and then exchanged a glance with Diana.

“I’ve got this,” said Bond very quietly. “Stay here and wait for my word.” He waited for their nods of acknowledgment and then ducked, sliding around the edge of the wall.

Peter held his breath, straining to hear as much as he could, and then realized it was a tad counterproductive as he felt a pressure in his chest that would herald a cough if he wasn't careful. Then Diana's fingers dug into his arm, and he heard what she apparently had a moment before: footsteps coming around the corner, but much more slowly.

They had time, the three of them, to crawl backwards and hide in a small shed, the giant hole in the roof implying that this one wasn't used anymore. Moneypenny left the door cracked just enough that she could see out, and Peter was lucky that he was tall enough to see over her head.

A moment later the person in question appeared, and it was a man, in grimy chef pants and a stained white jacket. Peter felt Moneypenny shake a little bit with surprise or laughter, but she stifled it soon enough. The man—the chef, apparently—walked until he was in a relatively open area and reached in his pocket for something. Peter tensed until he saw that it was just a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

The chef didn’t say anything. He smacked the pack of cigarettes against his palm with a gesture so economical Peter could read his years of the habit in giant neon letters, then tugged out a cigarette with his lips and flicked the lighter under the end, a flame springing to life on the second click. Peter found himself wondering if the man knew what was going on in the world outside—if he had any idea of the terror his employer had engineered, or whether he was as ignorant of the pandemic outside this island as Jeanne-Marie had been.

The man took a long drag, before tilting his face up and jetting grey smoke towards the sky out of his nose. With his other hand, he tucked his lighter and pack of smokes back into his pocket, and then came back out with what looked to be a small metal flask.

“What’s he doing?” Diana whispered in Peter’s ear, so soft it was barely more than an exhalation.

“Having a drink on his smoke break, looks like,” murmured Peter. The chef had taken a swig of whatever was in the flask, and from the faint grimace Peter guessed it wasn’t water.

Abruptly he stood, and Peter's hand went to his gun, as did Moneypenny's, out of reflex more than anything; he could feel Diana shift her stance, as well. They relaxed a moment later, though, as he walked away from them, toward the graves marked only with numbers.

"Boss?" Diana said, the word mostly a soft hiss.

"Graves," he said back.

The chef stopped abruptly in front of a grave, indistinguishable from the rest except for the number, and Peter strained to hear if he would say anything.

He didn't, though, not for a long moment; he just stared, and then held out the flask of liquor. With a curt nod, he tipped it to the side and poured out a measure on the grave. He watched the liquid sink into the sandy dirt, bare as it was, and then spoke for the first time. “You miserable fuck,” he spat. The words came out forced, like he didn’t have quite enough air for them; Peter’s jaw tightened, and he lowered his weapon.

The man heaved a sigh, something falling from his shoulders. He recapped the flask and walked back to the wall, leaning against the concrete to finish his cigarette.

Once he'd smoked it down to the filter, he threw it to the ground, stomped on it, kicked it aside, and left the way he'd came, his stride maybe a little lighter. The moment he was out of earshot, though, a touch came on the door and Bond came into view, motioning them to come out. "It's clear," he said quietly, and they followed him out to the corner. "Be careful, though," he said. "I've seen a few security measures. There's a motion detecting laser at around ankle-height on most of the intersections, so watch where I walk."

Peter nodded. The four of them walked silently, Bond in the lead and Peter taking the rear, through the rest of the courtyard, past a small, empty outbuilding like a guard post, until they reached a double door, heavy steel, leading into the main building itself. Peter looked around, shading his eyes with one hand, the sun too bright even with sunglasses. Bond pulled the door open, no locks or anything; something about the soft _wh-creeaaak_ of the door on its hinges swept through Peter like a vengeful ghost, hitting a nerve somewhere deep inside. 

Even if they got out of here with the DRACO—even if they found Neal (and they would find Neal, Peter would not even permit the alternative to enter his mind as a possibility)—Peter wondered if they’d ever know how many people had died here. How many people had come to this island, believing a bright future lay ahead of them, only to discover that the exact opposite was true? Peter had overseen murder investigations and run teams into child prostitute rings—there was a reason he’d transferred to the White Collar division—but he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything in his life that matched up to the grimness they’d walked through here.

He put the thought aside. Either there would be time later, or there wouldn’t be anything at all. Peter went through the door.

* * * * *

"Thank you for sharing your chocolate," El said to Q as she blew her nose for the five hundredth time since she got up that morning, or so it felt.

"Of course," he said, distracted by whatever was on his screen; El couldn't blame him. She wanted to stand up and pace, but was afraid it would be distracting, if not to him then to the other people clustered around him with laptops and tablets. One, and she hadn't caught his name, had a pen pushed into his hair that was bouncing gently as he nodded at his screen, and El chuckled.

Which turned into a cough; she buried her face in her arm and just rode it out until she could breathe again. Tanner was looking at her, brows meeting in concern, as she looked up, and she said, "I'm alive."

"Do you need anything?" Tanner asked.

"Something to drink, maybe?" She hadn't seen any water fountains in the halls, but there had to be something nearby.

"Here," Q said, and tossed her a bottle, maybe sixteen ounces, holding what looked like green sludge.

She'd seen similar concoctions in health food restaurants, but nonetheless asked, "What is it?"

"Some goop the doctors thought up to counteract the fact that the Q Branch is a bunch of basement-dwelling, sunlight-shunning nerds, and I'm allowed to say that," Q said mildly to the disgruntled looks of his coworkers. "I'm your boss."

“It’s not goop,” said a young woman nearby; she looked to be about thirty, if El was any judge. “It’s fortified with—”

“I know what it’s fortified with, I helped consult on the project,” Q cut in. “It still tastes like nuclear waste.”

“Says the man who drinks more of it than everyone else in the office combined,” the young woman pointed out, and Q shrugged as if to say, _guilty as charged_.

“Good enough for me,” said El, and twisted off the cap. It actually didn’t smell that bad at all—a little more sugary than what she normally liked to drink, but definitely no worse than the Monsters or Red Bulls that everyone at Peter’s office drank when they were working long hours. She took a sip, and wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Wow, that’s…”

“Nuclear waste,” Q repeated. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Why would you want to?” asked El, and took another sip, just to confirm. Yep, it really did taste that bad.

“I needed something to drink that wasn’t tea or coffee,” said Q. “I was up to nearly 10 cups a day and my insides staged a revolt. The medical wing had just launched their health-drinks program, so I figured I would set a good example.”

Throughout this entire conversation, Q hadn’t once taken his eyes from the words on the screens in front of him. El honestly had no idea how he was keeping track of everything; he had easily five screens on his workstation (though one looked to have been dragged over from someone else’s desk, and she wasn’t sure how permanent a fixture it was); three of them showed the blocks of security feeds from Alastair Thompson’s island stronghold; another scrolled news from various feeds around the world; and the last was rapidly scrolling a string of numbers and letters that El didn’t pretend to understand, but she knew was Q traversing the innards of Thompson’s security system.

El took another slurp of the goop—it certainly couldn't hurt her, and Q seemed to be in decent enough health, despite his current mild-to-moderate flu. It mostly tasted bad, but there was a few different _kinds_ of bad, and, well, she had nothing better to do, so she tried to parse them out. That bit had the bitterness of celery, and maybe a hint of orange peel—not the zesty part, but the white stuff. And that was—actually, it tasted like those terrible cough drops that she'd bought by accident once, the ones with the zinc in them. Well, zinc was good for colds, so . . .

Colds. Which were viruses, like the flu. "Q," she said, "what exactly is in these?"

When Q didn't answer, Tanner held out his phone with a list of ingredients; El took it from him with a quiet, "Thanks," and read.

Yes. There it was. Zinc glutamate, 50 mg per half-liter. If Q was drinking several of those a day, he'd be getting something like ten times the recommended daily dose of zinc. It might be nothing, or it might be something. She turned back to Tanner, handed him his phone, and said, "There's a very high dose of zinc in these."

"Yes," said the young woman who had defended the drink earlier. "Zinc is thought to help with acne."

"Oh, shut it, you," Q said, his eyes still on the scrolling code.

"Yes, well," El said, "it's also supposed to help with colds. Which are viruses, too, and if you're drinking several of those a day, Q . . ."

She trailed off as Q spun in his seat, staring at her.

“Bullshit,” he blurted.

“Excuse you,” said El.

Q had the grace to look embarrassed, hastily adding, “No, I’m sorry, that was rude, I meant, it’s—that can't possibly be true. It sounds too much like, I don't know, homeopathy or some such rubbish."

"No, that one's true," said the young man with the pen in his hair. "I saw this study few years back, said something about zinc lozenges helping reduce the severity of the common cold, something about inflammatory cytokines...” He trailed off; El could read the dawning realization in his eyes. “—we have to tell Medical. Although, Q, sir, you drink more than anyone else. Why are you the sickest?”

Good question, El thought, and even Q blinked and paused for a moment. “I don’t know, but as it happens, while I was the first to _get_ sick, I am by no means the sickest, or I would not be standing in front of you as we speak. Nevertheless, we should get Medical on this. You get back to what you were doing.”

Q straightened, his voice turning sharp. “Tessa, ring Shane in biomedical, tell him we need rapid-result tests for zinc or any of its most common compounds in everyone whose blood samples have tested positive for the H1N1 variant and then a data analysis of the correlation between severity of effects and zinc levels. I’m not going to call the WHO when we’re still half-cocked on this.” He paused, and then got up and went to the mini-fridge sat against one wall of the room, and dug out another half-dozen of the energy drinks. Wordlessly, he passed one out to everyone sitting in close rotation of his desk, and then cracked the last one for himself.

Everyone was still looking at him. Q narrowed his eyes. “What are you waiting for?” he demanded. “I want those results _now_.” Abruptly the room was filled with people bent over their desks. El had never seen so many people so keen on their computer screens.

“I don’t suppose there’s a zinc supplement in those hormone cocktails you sent the agents off with?” El ventured after a moment. Q seemed to deflate a little bit, but his expression did not change, yet again focused on the scroll of information across his many screens.

“It did not,” he said quietly. El just nodded, and took a drink to disguise the sudden lump in her throat.

* * * * *

Peter should’ve known the rescue mission was going to go wrong at _some_ point. Well. Wronger than it had when Neal had been kidnapped in the first place.

At Bond’s whispered direction, they all took large steps at the door to avoid the motion detector, and did the same thing at the next door, only a few feet in, like an airlock or something. It was only at the third door, twenty or thirty feet down a side corridor, that Peter, well, tripped.

He stumbled, catching himself almost immediately, but too late, his ankle sliding cleanly through the path of the camera affixed at ground-level in the wall. An alarm shrieked instantly to life, splitting the air around them like an air-raid siren, Diana’s curse lost in the klaxon.

“So much for sneaking in,” said Q in their ears; his words were light, but his voice had the same tightness to it that Peter got himself when he was directing Neal on a dangerous play. “I’ve got a layout of the compound now, agents, so keep your weapons ready and follow my lead. Turn—”

Q broke off, a sharp inhale just barely audible over the feed in Peter’s ear. “What is it?” demanded Bond. “Q, what’s wrong?”

“Run,” said Q tersely. “Thompson’s second has a gun on Neal and she looks like she means to use it.”

Peter's heart stopped in his throat and he had started running before Bond even gave a response. He didn't care about the burn of his lungs or the pounding of his heart, and it was only sheer luck—or, more likely, Q's skill—that had the quartermaster calling out directions just in time. Bond was barely behind him, Peter's longer legs giving him an edge, and the women brought up the rear; he heard a gunshot ring out and Diana's triumphant, "Ha!" behind him.

Bond shot another guard as they rounded a corner before Peter could even go for his weapon, and he was thankful; the guard's dead body held the door open, and Peter leaped over him and continued running. Two more turns and another door had him in a large room with a table at one end and several people standing around near it; he barely registered that there were people other than Neal in the room.

"Neal," he said, breath like knives in this throat, heart pounding in his ears. He took a couple of wheezing breaths, enough time to register that Neal was still alive and that the woman—Jiang Li—had turned to point her gun at Peter himself. _Should’ve had your gun out, Burke_ , he thought, too late.

“Put your weapon down,” said Bond’s voice from behind Peter, at the same time as Neal blurted _Peter!_ and made to come towards him, only to be grabbed by Jack before he could move more than an inch or two.

“Not likely,” said Jiang Li, her expression not wavering in the slightest.

Al had his gun out now, too, a beat behind Jiang Li, his face rock-hard as he spoke to her. "What the hell are they doing here? You said his tracker was disabled!" The muzzle of his gun didn't waver from Bond's head, although Bond's gun was pointed at Jiang Li and she was aimed at Peter himself. Jack's gun was aimed at Neal, just to complete the tableau.

"His tracker _was_ disabled!" Jiang Li said, her eyes still on Peter. "I've been monitoring it since the moment it went offline and I did not miss any alerts." Her face gave the impression that she had never, ever missed an alert in her life.

Peter still couldn’t see Bond, but he could more than imagine the look on his face from the steel in his voice when he spoke. "Drop. Your. Weapon. You're surrounded and out-gunned."

Jiang Li arched one eyebrow and said, "I think not." She tilted her head to indicate Neal, and added, "We appear to have the trump card."

Peter's heart, already racing, jumped to his throat as he flicked his gaze between the guns in the room and then back to Neal. As terrible an idea as it was to take his eyes off the person with the gun trained on him, he couldn't not make eye contact with Neal.

Neal himself seemed only dimly aware of the fact that Jack had a gun muzzle against his ribs, his eyes likewise glued to Peter. Peter had never felt so thwarted in his life—to be so close and yet so unable to protect Neal was physically painful in a way distinct from the flu ravaging his body.

“All this way to rescue him, and it turns out that you’re the one who needs rescuing.” Thompson sounded amused. “Funny how that works.”

“We might’ve looked into your store of DRACO while we were here,” said Bond coolly. He was level with Peter now, and Peter could just see his weapon and icy expression out of the corner of his eye. “Only because it’s convenient, of course.”

“Oh, you mean the stock I’ll be destroying shortly?” Jiang Li flashed a mouthful of venom and teeth at them, the way a cobra would smile if it could. Her gun did not waver even a fraction of an inch as she spoke. “Don’t worry. Every single room in this building is wired independently to explode and—oh, right!—I’m the one with the controls.”

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck_ said a voice in Peter’s ear as a chill went down his spine; it took him a second to recognize it as Q in his earpiece and not his own mental refrain.

"That's enough," Thompson said sharply. "No need for any of that yet, Jiang Li." He watched Peter intently, a quick flick of his gaze over Peter's shoulder bringing Bond in as well. "Since it's not as if our guests can do anything to stop us. You're all already infected, aren't you?" The intense look transmuted into a smirk. "I can see it in your face."

It took everything Peter had left in him not to cough, to prove Thompson correct; he could feel it rising in his chest, and tamped it down enough to say, "You're wrong. We can stop you, and we will." He leveled his own gaze back at Thompson, letting anything that was not certainty and conviction drain to the back of his mind.

"Really?" Thompson said. "How are you going to do that, exactly?" He took a few slow steps towards them, his eyes dark, gun never wavering. "I've run the models. Our lowest estimation has sixty percent of the world's population already infected, seventy-five percent at the high end. Of the infected, eighty percent will die, killed by their own over-active immune systems or following opportunistic infections. It's the most contagious virus in man's wretched history. Even if you took every sample of DRACO with you today, you'd never be able to stop the pandemic. There's not even a tiny fraction of what you need."

"Ah, but we have the means to make more. Your model, by the way?" Bond said. "Flawed. As is your ideology." His gun hand remained steady, as well, his intensity matching Thompson's.

 _Not yet, we don't,_ Q's voice murmured in Peter's ear, _but I'm almost there . . ._

Jiang Li spoke again then, her hand tightening a little on her weapon as she burst out, “ _Your_ ideology is what’s flawed. Why are you fighting to save a world so filled with vice and horror and corruption? You’ve seen the very worst of what people can do, so why bother? They’re all better off dead.”

“People aren't all vice, horror, and wickedness any more than they're all sweetness and light,” retorted Peter, unable to help himself. “They're people, and that's enough.” He knew arguing with crazy was like spitting into the wind, most of the time, but he couldn’t stand here and let Thompson and Jiang Li spout this kind of bullshit anymore than he could choose to stop breathing.

He caught Neal's eye, and saw an almost fond look on the other man's face; his heart gave a desperate thump, but he couldn't say anything, couldn't blurt out the _I love you_ that sat heavily on his tongue. But he could, if he were lucky, pass Neal a message. He and Neal were the only two without guns, and maybe if they could get out of the way, then Bond—and presumably Diana and Moneypenny, even though he couldn't see them—could shoot unimpeded. The only way out at the moment was down, so while Jiang Li repeated herself about the awfulness of humanity, he caught Neal's eye again and then looked at his shoes, twice in a row, the fall of his gaze slow and deliberate. He then looked over at Jack's and Thompson's guns, and then down at the floor again.

Whether it was because they'd been working together for a while, or because they'd known each other even longer, or because making love had given them some sort of weird mind-communication powers, Peter didn't know, but he saw the instant that Neal _got_ it. He didn't think it would be obvious to anyone else, but it was obvious to him, even if Neal wiped the look off of his face a split second later.

"People? Right." Thompson was suddenly furious, his idle amusement and patience with Jiang Li's turn speaking flipping to anger like a switch being thrown. "Do you know how many people were murdered in the twentieth century? If you'd seen half of what I've seen—" He gritted his teeth, advancing on Peter, ignoring Bond's warning to _stay back_. "We're poisoning the whole world in between murdering each other, we're building more bombs every day—"

“It doesn’t matter,” Jiang Li cut in. “They don’t have to understand. They're still going to die.” Her face was tight as her voice, her hands white-knuckled on her weapon.

“No,” said Bond, “We're not. You are.”

“Oh, but you see, we’re not,” said Thompson. Peter tried to keep his eyes on Thompson, not wanting to give him and Neal away before the right moment came. “We’re safe here. _Neal_ was safe here until you came for him. Safe from the horrible things humanity perpetuates upon itself. And Neal…”

Thompson backed up a few steps until Neal was in his field of vision again, though Peter was sad to see that Q’s information on Thompson’s background was correct and the muzzle of his gun was still pointed right at Bond. “Neal, I’m sorry, I really am, but Peter, for all his vaunted ideals of justice and what is correct… he’s just as corrupt as the rest of them. The government chews up everyone and spits them out in their own image. I know this firsthand. So he will have to die, as well. It's really rather humane that he'll die quickly, by gunshot, rather than having to suffer with everyone else.

Bond's voice came lazily over Peter's shoulder. "Death is all we need, eh?"

Bond couldn't possibly have known what Peter and Neal had planned, but it was the perfect opening, so Peter caught Neal's eye and dropped, falling to his hands and then immediately flat on the floor. He was reasonably certain that Neal had too, and he heard a cluster of gunshots.

"Looks like you forgot to include yourself in there," Bond said, and Peter only barely noted that he was still alive through the waves of dizziness and nausea that flowed through him, his inner ear harshly protesting the way he just dropped to the ground. His lungs burned and his head pounded, but he hauled himself up enough to see if Neal was still alive.

He was, flat on the floor, covered by Jack, who seemed to have been shot. Thompson had been shot as well, and the glassiness of his gaze told Peter that if he wasn't dead yet, he would be within seconds. Diana was crouching nearby, looking pissed off, her hand pressed to a small splotch on her left shoulder.

“Are you—” Peter tried.

“Just grazed me,” Diana said curtly. She turned her head, and Peter followed her gaze to see Jiang Li leaving the room, stopping just long enough to kick the table over behind her to block Bond’s shots at her back. 

Moneypenny appeared then, kneeling beside Diana and Peter with stormclouds riding her face. “Bond’s shot, but he wouldn’t let me have a look at it, just took off,” she said tightly. “So either he’s fine or he’s just a git.”

“Or both,” said Diana, and Moneypenny smirked and tipped her head.

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw movement, but it was just Jack rolling off of Neal and pressing a hand to his side. Peter ignored him in favor of Neal; he managed to haul himself over the few feet that separated them.

Dimly, Peter heard Jack say something to Moneypenny, but his world was rapidly narrowing to Neal's face and Neal's face only; his arm gave out and he fell partway onto Neal, who had turned onto his side. Fingers found his forehead and Peter thought he heard Neal say his name, but he could barely hear over the rushing in his ears. He had one last thing to do before he passed out, though, and he put his last wisp of energy into saying, "I love you," before everything went black.

* * * * *

Q watched with his heart in his throat at the stand-off going down inside the compound, sure that at any moment he’d see James shot, see Moneypenny shot, see Neal shot—he’d seen it before and he knew he’d see it again, but his heart really couldn’t take anymore days like today; he needed a damn vacation. A cluster of people had formed around them, all other activity in the immediate vicinity abandoned. He twitched as Peter and Neal dropped like stones, shots ringing out, crackling like fireworks in his ears and on the cameras.

“PETER!” Elizabeth’s cry in Q’s ear was short, choked-off. She slapped a hand over her mouth as soon as she spoke, as though afraid her outburst would distract the agents on the screen, the action too quick to follow: Jiang Li shooting for Neal, but hitting Jack instead when Jack jumped in front of her gun; Jiang Li kicking over the table and bolting for the door, even as James staggered and shot at her retreating back; and then, Q’s heart knotting in his throat, Peter’s barely-audible confession to Neal before he collapsed of God knew what.

Q dug his fingers into the desktop, trying to keep a lid on it. “Moneypenny, what the hell is going on over there?” 

The response came back immediately, Moneypenny’s voice tight, her form crouched over Peter’s inert form. “Bond was hit, not bad I don’t think, but he’s gone after Jiang Li. Diana was just grazed; Caffrey and I are fine, but Burke’s collapsed. He’s not shot that I can tell—”

El, inches away from Q's shoulder, didn't move, but he could hear her strained breathing, and the muffled sob through her hand. He reached out to grip her knee, and she put her hand over his briefly. He was trying hard not to give in to the panic flashing red in the back of his mind to hear of James being shot. (Again.)

"—but he can't have blown through the cocktail in only five hours, can he?"

"Maybe," Q said. "It's not the most precise science." He scanned through the various monitors. "Do we know where Jiang Li is headed?"

"Jiang Li's got an emergency bag full of about a hundred doses of DRACO and several vials of the flu, along with a portable hard drive full of everything the scientists did," Jack said, coughing wetly; Q heard him only dimly through Bond’s earpiece. "She's going to go get that and go for one of the planes, to get out of here. Trust me on this one. She's got worst-case scenarios for everything."

"Pfotenhauer—rather unclear whose side he's on at the moment, but I have no reason to doubt him—says that Jiang Li has a kit full of what she needs to get out of here and, from the sounds of it, try again. What's that?" Through the monitor, Q saw Moneypenny bend over Jack, and he could hear the man faintly through her earpiece now.

"Your side," Jack said, with another wet cough. "I'm dying; I've got nothing to lose. She'll also start blowing up parts of the compound."

"You're the one who put the phone in my jacket, aren't you?" Neal said, and Q switched to the camera in the other corner so he could see Neal, crouched with Peter's head in his lap, an arm around Peter's shoulder. Diana was hovering over both of them with a worried expression on her face.

"Yes," Jack said, Q split the screen so he could have both of them right in front of him. Even through the pixellated feed, he could see the dark spot spreading on Jack's side, under his fingers.

His facial-recognition program beeped as he found James on the cameras. "Moneypenny, can you and Agent Berrigan—"

"We'll get Peter and Neal and Jack out, along with the scientist in the dry-goods shack," Moneypenny said. "You help Bond find Jiang Li. Once we've got everyone in the boat, you can tell me if Bond needs help and I'll go find him." 

“Confirmed, Agent Moneypenny.” Q was proud that his voice came out level, not weak with relief like his insides were. He flicked the controls, switching the image of that room to a monitor off to the side, and cycled through the cameras till he’d relocated James, before finally finding him down a dark hallway, dodging bullets from Jiang Li’s gun. It was too dark and grainy for Q to tell if or where he’d been hit, but despite illness and injury, James showed no sign of relenting.

Q leaned forward, his training saving him from having to grope for words. “007, I’ve got you on camera—I’ll take care of any other defenses you encounter, just—”

“Got it,” said James, voice rough. “Can you disable her plane remotely?” He gritted his teeth, forcing the words out like passing stones, ducking around the edge of the corridor to pop off another couple of shots before flattening himself against the wall for cover again.

“I’m trying,” said Q. “Nothing yet. You should—” 

He didn’t get a chance to finish. A massive crump of sound blew through the speakers, so loud that everyone crowded around the desks jumped, wincing at the noise. Q stared in horror at the huge fireball that blossomed on one of his screens, exploding out the side of the building like a star going nova. 

Moneypenny’s voice crackled in through the computer. “What the fuck was that?”

"Something exploded!" Q said, fingers flying over keyboards to see what exactly he'd lost. "It must have been the DRACO, that bitch—" He was aware that his cursing wasn't entirely professional, but he’d stopped caring hours ago.

"I'm cutting transmissions," Bond said. "Can't risk setting off anything else. Watch my back, Q." Bond turned off his earpiece before Q could say anything, and Q spat out more unprofessional curses as he heard Moneypenny do the same thing.

"What?" El said, gripping the back of Q's chair. "Why did they sign off, what?"

"Radio transmissions, or ones from mobile phones, can set off explosives, if they're wired to go off from, say, any mobile signal," Q said, explaining on autopilot as he watched Bond through the cameras.

Peter's earpiece came alive, surprisingly, with a slurred, "Whatthehell?" and El sucked in a breath.

"The explosion woke Peter up," Moneypenny said, garbled through Peter’s headset; Q looked for her on the cameras, and found that she and the others were almost out of the building. "We'll be able to get him to the boat faster. He's—as far as I can tell, he's just sick."

"Yeah," Peter said. He sounded quite ill, even just in that single word. 

"Moneypenny out, until I've got them in the boat." There was a click as she turned off Peter’s headset. 

"Roger that, Agent," Q said, though she was already gone, and then turned back to Bond and his starring role in the world's most suspenseful silent film.

It wasn’t totally silent, of course; distant noises filtered through from the cameras placed around Thompson’s island compound: sounds of wind and water, and more distant sounds of engines, probably of boats out in the Mediterranean. But Bond and Jiang Li were noiseless, deadly ghosts darting from camera to camera. It wasn’t a flat-out chase—every time she got far enough ahead of him to fall into a sprint, Bond would take aim and force her to ground again, catching up just enough to keep her from being able to make a run for her plane before she turned her weapon on him in kind and he ducked behind something to protect himself.

It was the worst ten minutes of Q’s life. He could hear the echo of gunshots every time Jiang Li took aim at him, and god, she was nearly as good a marksman as he was. Worse, Q could see the fatigue slowly starting to have an effect on Bond; he’d never even taken the hypo cocktail Q had sent with them, not like Peter, and Q had no guarantee he wouldn’t keel over at any moment. Q bit his lip so hard he tasted copper, and only Elizabeth’s hand on his arm kept him from knocking his drink into the controls when another explosion went off near Bond’s hiding place, set off by a bullet into some kind of propane tank. 

“God fucking dammit, James,” Q hissed under his breath. 

Eventually Jiang Li managed to work her way into the airplane hangar, and Bond managed to catch up while she waited for a door to unlock. He kicked the gun out of her hand but lost his own in her return motion, and then it was one on one, fists flying.

Bond got a good punch in on Jiang Li's jaw, but it didn't seem to faze her; she got in close and jabbed him in the ribs enough to make him stagger. Her sideways movements were a little reminiscent of jiu jitsu, but when she locked her legs around his arm and took him to the ground, it was Tanner who said, from halfway across the room, "Krav maga."

"Fuck," Q breathed. Well, there was nothing he could do to help Bond with that, and he watched as Jiang Li flew at Bond, over and over.

In Bond's defense, he seemed to be holding his own; apparently even Israeli street fighting wasn't enough to defeat a double-oh agent immediately, and Bond got in a few good hits that rocked her on her feet. She fell into a roll after one such hit and— _oh fuck_ —came up with her gun in one hand, improbably getting off a shot before Bond knocked it away from her again.

Q was dimly aware of people crowded behind him, that the entire room had gone silent, watching the drama play out. He sucked in a breath as Jiang Li seemed to fly up off the ground, getting her legs around Bond’s shoulders and using her momentum to fling him hard to the cement. Bond went down like a sack of bricks, Jiang Li on top of him, driving her boot into his chest as she laid him out flat, Bond’s entire body rocking with the force of the blow. 

“No!” Q was up on his feet, his own fatigue long-since forgotten, hands gripping the desk tight. Jiang Li was into Bond’s shoulder-holster in the precious seconds he was too stunned to move, quick as a snake, coming out with his spare gun, cocking the safety and pointing it right at Bond’s heart. “NO!” 

It happened in an instant: _Here’s your mercy_ , she said, barely audible on the camera feed, and then the gun exploded in her hands. 

Someone screamed. Q’s tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth; it was too smoky to see for several seconds, and then it cleared, and Bond was sitting up, shoving a curiously-truncated body off him, splattered in blood and black ash, grimacing. He reached up to touch his ear, and his voice came through the speakers, scratchy but understandable. “Bad news, Q,” he said. “I’ve gone and lost that new exploding gun prototype you sent me with.”

Q’s throat locked up; he had to swallow several times to work out the knot. “I’m going to take it out of your hide, 007,” he managed finally, and nearly fell over when someone clapped him on the shoulder. 

"It's alright, Q," said Tanner, and when the hell had he snuck up, Q would like to know. "He did it." 

"Of course he did," said Q irritably. "He's _Bond_." He didn't even realize who was laughing until he saw the way Bond was bent over on the feed, hands on his knees. "Shut it, you," he said, but there was no heat left. "Don't you have a mission to finish, 007?"

"Roger that, Q," said Bond in his ear, and Q smiled.

* * * * *

Peter had managed to regain a modicum of control over his limbs by the time Neal had hauled him into the boat, so he could hear the explosion that happened on the other side of the island. By the looks on their faces, Diana and Moneypenny very much wished that they could go help Bond, but they followed orders to stay put, Moneypenny helping the scientist they'd found earlier into the boat even as she cast glance after glance back in the direction they’d come from.

The scientist—Jeanne-Marie—took one look at Peter and said, "I'm so sorry."

"Not your fault," Peter said, and coughed.

Diana, with Neal's help, cut off Jack's shirt in an attempt to stanch the flow of blood, keeping pressure on it as best she could. Unlike Peter, who had managed to make it to the boat under at least some of his own power while leaning heavily on Neal, Jack had been carried to the boat across Moneypenny’s capable shoulders in the most effective use of the fireman’s carry Peter had ever seen. Diana had brought up the rear, her gun out and eyes peeled. 

"It's not—going to . . . work," Jack gritted out. He was coughing up blood, blackish-red and smearing the corner of his mouth. "Don't worry about me. Go help Bond, get Jiang Li's bag, and then get off the island."

"I'm not giving up on you yet," Diana said, and even Neal nodded at that.

Just then, a second explosion came, and through Peter's earpiece, which he had no idea how he still had, came a scream, and some garbled noise, and then Bond's voice. "Bad news, Q. I've gone and lost that new exploding gun prototype you sent me with."

"Oh," Moneypenny said, and then slammed her hand into the side of the boat.

Peter sat up, or tried to; all that really happened was he was struck with another coughing fit, and Neal was there instantly, arms around Peter’s shoulders, stroking his hair back from his face. Peter wanted to learn into those touches, he really did, and it was kind of sad that it cost them this much to get this far, but no one in the boat with them seemed inclined to care. “Just lay back, Peter,” said Neal, his fingertips light on Peter’s face; his expression was complicated, eyes huge and blue, mouth twisting with some emotion Peter couldn’t parse when his head was this foggy.

Peter shook his head. “Jack,” he said again, managing not to cough, if just barely. “Did you—Neal’s tracker...?”

Jack seemed to understand his question; he nodded weakly, and Peter couldn’t help but notice the grey pallor of his skin. “That was me,” he ground out. “Sorry, Peter. Shouldn’t have bought it to—start with. If I hadn’t—”

“Don’t,” said Peter with an effort. “You can make it, just a little—a little more, Jack.”

A moment later there was a grinding noise, and a door opened. Moneypenny and Diana whipped around to see who was coming.

It was Bond, carrying a duffel bag over his shoulder and running across the dirt and sand. When he got close enough, he handed the bag to Moneypenny and said, "This should be everything. Can we fit all six of us in the boat, or do I need to liberate another one?"

"We’re fine," Diana said, still putting pressure on Jack’s wound.

Moneypenny nodded. "Agreed. Now get in the bloody boat and let someone have a look at your wound, you _arse_.”

“It’s not that bad!” Bond protested, the smile hovering on his lips nothing short of smug. 

“No, mine isn’t that bad,” said Diana, in the same tone of voice someone might use on a wayward teenager. She’d found duct-tape somewhere, Peter saw, and had used it on her own arm, and she was now glaring at Bond like she was considering whether or not to use it on his mouth. “You. Sit.” 

Bond sat. Neal took over tending to Jack as Diana saw to Bond’s gunshot wound. Moneypenny took her turn at looking smug, but it was gone swiftly as she turned her attention back to business.  
“Q, can you destroy the island?"

“Hold up,” said Peter forcefully. “No destroying the island till we know if anyone else on it is left alive.” His brain was lagging badly, he knew, but if there was even one person left—

But Jeanne-Marie was shaking her head. "There are too many people left here, and while they are not innocent, they are not guilty either," she said.

"I can limit the explosions to the hangar and the docks," Q said. "That will keep everyone here until we can get the authorities in to sort everything out."

"Will the authorities listen to them?" Jeanne-Marie asked.

"I promise that whatever is within my power to do to get them a fair shake, I will," Moneypenny said, and Jeanne-Marie nodded.

“Ready to detonate whenever you’re all clear,” Q said in everyone's ear. 

“Wait!” Neal said, holding up one hand, and Peter raised his head an inch or so to look at him. “There’s some artwork in the compound, in Thompson’s private rooms. Will it be safe?”

Trust Neal to think of the art, even in the middle of a pandemic. Bond and Moneypenny exchanged a look, and then in the voice of a man clearly on his very last nerve, Bond said, “We’ll make sure there’s an art specialist on the team who comes to investigate the island.”

“I’m setting one up now,” Q added, and Neal nodded, not looking quite satisfied, but just as clearly unwilling to argue the point with Bond.

“There’s also a cache—I don’t know where it is but he strongly implied that it was somewhere off island—”

“We’ve got the location for that in the files, Neal,” Q said. “We’ll send agents there as soon as we can.”

“Oh, thank God,” Neal said, and slumped against the side of the boat as if his strings had been cut.

Peter let out his breath as carefully as he could, trying not to send himself into another coughing fit. He really, really wanted to get off this island, and if Bond or someone had to go look for some paintings, that would be a delay. Of course, his own health and mental well-being wasn’t the only reason not to want a delay, and he turned his head to look at Jack.

Jack’s eyes were closed and he was breathing very shallowly; Peter reached out to place fingers on his wrist, and his skin was cold and clammy. He didn’t respond to Peter’s touch, either, and Peter thought he’d probably slipped into unconsciousness. 

Even as he thought that, Diana spoke. “We need to hurry. I don’t think Jack’s going to last much longer.”

Moneypenny started the motor on the boat, and they took off.

Peter was not normally a vindictive person; he tried not to take pleasure in other peoples’ losses or errors. But he’d never wanted someone to be wrong so badly in his life as he wanted Diana to be wrong now. He fought his own rapidly-fading energy, sitting by Jack and holding his hand, watching the shallow rise and fall of his chest. Neal watched Peter, Jeanne-Marie stared at her hands, and Diana and the MI6 agents watched the horizon line, but Peter could tell that everyone in their boat was listening to Jack’s steadily-worsening breathing.

Peter heard it, instead of felt it; there was a rattle in Jack’s throat, and a faint cough, and then his chest sank and did not fill again. Peter bit the inside of his cheek; after a moment, he tasted copper, and had to work to swallow. 

Moneypenny caught Peter’s eye; she shook her head and said quietly, “CPR would only delay the inevitable. He’s lost too much blood to make it more than a couple more minutes, and this was at least peaceful.” She gestured to the spreading pool of blood under Jack, despite Diana’s ministrations.

“He saved my life,” Neal said very quietly. Peter nodded. He felt like he should say more, like he, as the senior FBI member here, should have something to say out of respect for a fellow agent, never mind their different agencies, but the fog in his mind was heavy and he was so tired. And hurt, in more ways than one. 

“How long until we get to the island?” Peter asked; he could hear that his words were somewhat slurred, but he didn’t have the energy to repeat himself.

“Another twenty minutes or so,” Moneypenny said.

“Do I need to stay awake?” Peter said. His eyelids felt like they were made of lead.

“No, boss,” said Diana. Her voice was curiously gentle, Peter thought. “You can sleep.”

“Okay,” said Peter, and then a warm hand crept into his, lacing their fingers together and squeezing; Peter looked up at Neal’s eyes, so close by. “Wake me up if there’s a kraken or something,” said Peter, and Neal’s smile came out, more blinding than the sun.

“You got it, Peter,” said Neal. Peter smiled back. Then he shut his eyes and leaned against the side of the boat, and the feel of Neal’s hand in his was the last thing he registered before he let himself drift away.

* * * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little bit of info about [zinc compounds and their properties](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_gluconate) this time.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the end, what will be will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE IT IS, THE VERY LAST CHAPTER. Thank you all soooo much for reading, for your comments & your patience! It has been such a pleasure for us to co-write this beast & share it all with you, and while we're very proud of it, we're sad to see the story end. Thanks again to our lovely beta, sail_aweigh! ♥

The world kept turning.

Three months later, to an outside observer, Earth did not look much different. At 35,786 kilometers from Earth’s surface, the distance at which satellites spun in orbit, the bright lights of cities were still visible at night, and the swirling vortices of hurricanes and cyclones were easily identifiable. Satellite and radio still crackled through the airwaves, flitting to and from the heavenly bodies waiting to bounce the signals back.

Zooming into skydiving height, three to five kilometers, the first before-and-after changes became visible; several structures once visible even at that height were now dramatically different. The face of Mt. Rushmore was little more than a huge pile of granite rubble surrounded by the hills and plateaus of South Dakota. Similarly, on the other side of the planet, half of the mighty facade of the Kremlin now bore more resemblance to a partially-finished shopping mall, due to all the construction equipment bustling around its base. The Hollywood sign overlooking LA had already been rebuilt, and constructions crews were in full swing in central London, repairing the Clock Tower and the Millenium Bridge.

But even when zooming into the person-to-person level, the immediate difference of before-and-after what came to be known as the bomb flu was not readily apparent. It took a look at the numbers to really gauge what Alastair Thompson had attempted versus what he had actually achieved.

Naturally, number-crunching was one of the things Q was good at, as evidenced both in his work as quartermaster and in his private life as an artist painting fractals. He was one of the first to determine both how bad the damage was, and how much worse it could have been.

Of the twenty-six landmarks at which explosives were found, twenty-one were saved by the dispatched military of their sovereign nations, the targets ranging from the temple at Luxor in Egypt to the Potala Palace in Tibet. London, as the first target with no warning whatsoever, sustained the worst damage, with the United States following close behind, but the vast majority of targets were able to avoid major damage.

(“Why do you think he picked the targets that he did?” Tanner had asked, probably rhetorically, during one of the many overview meetings in the wake of the pandemic. “I mean, why the Sydney Opera House but not the Hagia Sophia? Bloody weird.”

“The man considered himself an art connoisseur,” Q had said calmly, without even looking up from his tablet. “No doubt he wanted to erase the ‘bad’ bits of human history and leave what he thought its most beautiful monuments were. Egotistical prick.”)

The final death toll from the H7N1 flu virus was estimated at 760,000 lost souls world-wide, which Q thought sounded utterly horrible until he compared it against the data from WHO that told him that seasonal deaths from influenza typically ranged between 250,000 and 500,000. Then he spent an hour stewing in the knowledge that half a million people died _annually_ from something as simple as the bloody flu, and then Moneypenny dragged him out for lunch to get him out of his funk. She reminded him (rather forcefully) that if not for the combination of the DRACO (which was not as reproducible quite as fast as they would have liked, but was still nothing short of miraculous) and the discovery that the zinc glutamate compound helped mitigate the severity of the virus’s effects, the death-toll would probably have been in the millions and not the hundreds of thousands, _and_ that the knowledge they gained in this pandemic would surely help prevent future deaths from seasonal influenza.

The big numbers were bad enough, but Q, being Q, had made sure to hunt down all the personal details, too. MI6 had lost fewer than a dozen employees to the bomb flu, but they also had the advantage of both early knowledge and easy access to the treatments. Nearly half the building had been out ill for some time. And while the entire team that had gone to the island was laid up sick in medical for a week, Q had passed the time with Elizabeth hunting down Jack Pfotenhauer and Ha Jiang Li’s backgrounds. Q knew that Peter, especially, would want to know what had happened to a man with such a flawless record to make him turn so far off-course.

Jiang Li's was a little simpler to pinpoint: a sister had gotten into the hands of a human trafficking ring, and had not gotten out. She'd been a black-hat hacker and also a soldier-style mercenary all over Asia, Europe, and South America; no one knew exactly when she had signed on to Thompson's cause, but she'd had at least twenty years of experience by that point. Banks, corporations, governments, the Mafia: she'd hacked them all, and had never been caught. Q appreciated her skill; he thought she'd probably started working with Thompson around when Q had been getting into the business (illegally), because he'd never come across her personally.

Jack, though, had been an exemplary CIA agent; his cover identity was excellent and well-kept, and his record within the agency was flawless. But at one point he'd been working with a group fighting drug cartels, and then very abruptly he'd been transferred to white-collar crimes. Q'd found records of Jack and a woman whose name had been permanently redacted applying for a marriage license some ten years ago, but there was no record of the license ever being filed with any state in the US, and Jack's tax returns never indicated a change in marital status. 

Knowing what Q did, he could put the pieces together: Jack had likely been undercover in a drug cartel, had fallen in love with a woman (whether she was related to the cartel or not was unknown), and then she had been killed and her existence erased by his employer either before they could marry or before they'd been married for very long at all.

Q combed through every last bit of intel, everything that even vaguely resembled a reliable report, either finding them himself through electronic means or having his contact in Intelligence send them along. He correlated every detail, meticulously crafting the fullest possible picture of the events and people that had led up to the pandemic and the terrorist acts surrounding it. The full report went to M’s desk; the only-slightly-more-bare-bones report was sent in PDF form to Peter, Diana, Eve, and James. Q discreetly sent a copy along to Neal as well, sourced from a no-return email address; Neal Caffrey did not, strictly speaking, have the security clearance for such info, but very occasionally rules weren’t worth giving a fuck about.

That was just one of the multitude of tasks that lay before Q and all the rest of MI6—the world, really. Literal and figurative rebuilding to be done, political finger-pointing and blaming to get on with, the whole lot of it. Q resignedly imagined that he’d be having an extra 15% of work on top of his normal load for the next year or so. But today—just for today, and maybe soon, for two or even three weeks—Q had other things on his mind.

Instead of his usual routine of staying well past everyone else had gone home for the day, Q logged out promptly at 2:40 and gathered up his things, giving himself almost an entire hour to get home by 3:30. He took three cabs and two different Tube trains before finally arriving at his flat (some habits died hard, no matter the fact that he wasn’t sure they were still strictly necessary) and gathered up his fluffy white cat at the front door of his home, heading immediately to the bedroom to boot up his personal computer. He was on Skype at 3:25 pm, and stole back to the kitchen just long enough to fix himself a cup of tea.

At 3:30 on the nose, his computer made the bloop-bleep noise to indicate an incoming video call, and Q clicked 'accept,' sending the entire conversation to one of the larger monitors on the wall. "Hello, Neal," he said.

"Q!" Neal said, grinning widely. "You're looking better-rested than I thought—no, Satch, go sit!" The nose of a yellow lab interposed itself between Neal and the camera and turned, the dog making a piteous whimpering noise, before retreating from view. "Sorry about that. He's usually well-behaved."

"No worries," Q said, chuckling as he watched Neal wipe dog-snot off of the monitor. "Hello, Satchmo, Peter, Elizabeth."

Peter and El were sitting just behind Neal, but still visible in the monitor, and El gave a wave and a warm smile as Peter said, "Hi, there."

"And how's everything on your side of the pond?" Q asked, settling back in his chair and taking a sip of his tea, which was still a little too warm to drink, especially considering that it was late summer. "You are all looking well." The last time he'd seen Peter in person, the man had been gaunt from a nasty couple of weeks in the hospital; now, he was nearly back to the robust attractiveness he'd sported when they'd first met.

"Thanks," Neal said. "I think we're all finally able to take a deep breath once in a while, metaphorically and literally."

“So long as no one’s fed Satch anything with garlic,” added Elizabeth, and Peter sputtered, clearly torn between laughter and embarrassment. Neal broke up laughing first, followed in short order by Elizabeth and then finally Peter, and Q felt his face split with a huge grin at the sight of them all looking so relaxed and happy.

“We should all be so lucky that that were amongst our worst fears,” Q noted, when the laughter had subsided somewhat. “Did you get my email?”

“I did,” said Neal and Peter in near-unison. To Q’s satisfaction, Peter did not look remotely surprised at Neal’s response. Good. Q had hoped their breakthrough would stick. “Thanks for looking into that for us,” Peter added, leaning forward a little, some of the humor slipping from his mouth and eyes.

“Of course,” said Q. “I am sorry we weren’t able to attend the funeral, but our hands were simply too full on this end.” Jack had been given a full military funeral with honors at Arlington National Cemetery, complete with 21-gun salute. Jack’s four-year stint in the Navy before entering the CIA would’ve been enough to earn him the military funeral, and MI6 lodged a formal request with the Honor and Merit Awards Board asking that a star be added to the Memorial Wall in his honor and his name be added to the Book of Honor.

Q knew that Peter (and perhaps James) had felt Jack’s betrayal and sacrifice keenly, and though Q was not quite ready to forgive the man in his part in the entire scheme, it was indisputable that without Jack’s help, MI6 would never have found Thompson’s island in time to do any good.

"It was very military," Neal said. "Pomp, circumstance, speeches given by people who barely knew him." He shrugged. "He saved a lot of lives—millions, I'm told—including mine, so he deserved it."

Peter reached out and took Neal's hand, just at the bottom of Q's screen, and Satchmo came into view again, leaning his head on Neal's leg. "He did," El said. "In significantly less depressing news, I understand they finally sorted out all the art from Thompson's cache and returned it to its rightful places."

"Yes," Q said, "and they found six or seven more Caffrey duplicates, I'm told. Agent Malhotra has become very adept at recognizing them."

"Oh," Neal said. "And, uh, what did they do with them?"

"Well, I believe Agent Malhotra was going to contact you to find out what you wanted done with them, but his suggestion was to auction them off with proper certificates of inauthenticity and donate the money to a relief fund. That having been said," Q continued, "I believe that one of the paintings appears to have made its way into a private collection already."

"Oh, really," Neal said, a grin spreading its way across his face. "Would this be a collection known for its Elliot Marsh paintings?"

"Correct," Q said, grinning back. "It's one of those sickeningly-romantic works you prefer, even."

"Please tell me it's Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose," Neal said.

Q nodded. "Don't worry. It's safe with me."

"Good," Neal said.

"Next time we're in London, we'll have to stop by and see it," Elizabeth said, "in its proper viewing area."

"Absolutely," Q said, nodding. "Although it's not out of the question that I'll be in New York before then, possibly within the next few months, even. I can't say why, or when exactly, but perhaps we could arrange another dinner party before too long, _chez vous_?"

“Q,” said Neal, adopting a tone of wounded pride, “I’m hurt that you even thought you had to ask.”

“God forbid I display manners, Caffrey,” said Q airily, and was rewarded with Elizabeth covering a laugh with one hand.

“We’d love to have you visit for dinner, Q,” Peter said, leaning forward again. “I assume you’ll be bringing your, ah, bodyguard?”

"Bodyguard," Q said, chuckling. "He's rather overkill for such a mundane position, but yes, of course James will be coming."

"I don't suppose you could hide some of Adrienne's scones in your luggage when you come," El said wistfully.

"Alas, they'd probably go stale," Q said. "They're at their best freshly baked, as I'm sure you realized." Q was privately rather smug about exactly how well-received Adrienne’s baked goods were, which was probably ridiculous, but then the woman was like a sister to him. They’d been through a lot together, even if she was mostly busy with running her business and raising a 4-year-old these days.

"Of course," El said. "Well, I'll just have to try to replicate the recipes on my own."

"Oh, damn," Neal said, and Q and Peter chuckled.

"So how is Eve doing?" Neal was asking, when Peter straightened abruptly and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

"Damn," he said. "My day off and I still have to take this. Nice talking to you, Q. Send my regards to James and everyone else."

"Cheers," Q said.

Neal and El closed the conversation up swiftly after that; turned out that both Peter and Neal had to go into the office briefly for whatever reason, and they made a date for a next conversation some two weeks out. Q wished them both well, and then turned off the program, leaning thoughtfully back in his chair. A small voice maowed at him from the floor, and moments later his lap was full of a warm, fluffy cat, Carly’s tail twitching back and forth as she kneaded the tops of his thighs. “Hello there, kitten,” Q said absently, petting her from head to tail.

Seeing El (and thinking of Adrienne’s pastries) had stirred loose a memory that had until late been buried by the course of events. Q stood, settling Carly against his chest; she started to purr as he crossed the room to the bed. He set her on the covers and crouched down, tugging out a box from under the bed.

Sure enough, caught between an old passport and a note that James had left on his desk back when they were first merely flirting, Q found the wrapper from the chocolate bar that James had given him when he was in isolation. He turned it over, and there was still an address and a passcode written there.

Obviously he had been somewhat busy, and he hadn't had the time to go search out the address; in the aftermath of near catastrophe, events had gotten away from him. But—Q checked the time—James wouldn't be home for another couple hours, at the earliest, so he had time now.

The address was in a run-down part of London and it was about a twenty-minute cab ride from Q's flat, but as usual he took multiple forms of transportation, and he got there about forty-five minutes after he left. It was an old office building or warehouse, and when Q found himself standing in front of the door to the room indicated, he was less surprised than he could have been to find a keypad.

Inputting the code, he tut-tutted under his breath at James's reliance on fundamentally-insecure locks, and pressed the enter key.

The locks clicked and whirred as they opened, and the heavy door swung open in front of him—from the weight of it, Q guessed it might be iron or an alloy. Q stepped inside, glancing around warily. He had no reason to think there would be any sort of danger lurking here (after all, he had the passcode, which meant James had meant for him to find it), but some habits were hard to beat.

Q now found himself inside a huge complex, rows upon rows of container units—some kind of store-it-yourself facility, he realized. It stretched above him, cavernous and echoing as the carcass of some leviathan. His footsteps rang loud in his ears, and Q wrinkled his nose, pressing his arms a little more tightly against his own sides, something more than the industrial-level air conditioning giving him the chills.

He’d never liked this kind of place. It always stank to him of regrets and unfinished promises: people storing up the bits and pieces of their lives they could no longer engage with but were unable to let go, left in a room to rot in the dark. But James had given him an address for a reason. Q checked the wrapper again: there was the address of the building and the input for the door code, which was all he’d seen when he’d first found the wrapper. But scrawled an inch or so under it, half-hidden by a smudge of chocolate, was another line that it merely said _R-368, B.D._

Q looked at the nearest unit, which was labeled _A-101_. He likely had a bit of walk until he got to the correct box, then. The next row was predictably B, and so on until he got to R.

368 was one of the larger boxes, approximately the size of Q's sitting room, if the exterior dimensions were accurate, and it had another keypad for entry. He had no idea what the code was, but there were eight blank spaces waiting for him, and—

—ah. 'B.D' meaning 'birthday.' His or James'? He knew when James' was, of course, although it wasn't exactly common knowledge, and he knew James knew his. Well, he'd likely get more than one try, so he typed in his own first like a computer programmer would,19860912.

Surprisingly, he was correct; the door unlocked with a grinding noise that spoke to a need for WD-40, and Q pulled the door open, not without effort. For an off-the-beaten-path storage facility, it was extraordinarily heavy-duty, he thought.

Inside was a large room with a surprisingly motley collection of items in there: a wardrobe, a bicycle, several wooden chests, and in the middle, on a table that Q thought might actually date from the first Queen Elizabeth's time, a small box. Atop the box was a folded piece of paper with his name on it—a single script 'Q.' He walked closer and saw that the box was actually an old cigar box, and with one careful finger he brushed the piece of paper aside and tipped the lid.

Whatever he was expecting, whatever memento he thought would be inside, it wasn’t what he found.

There was an envelope with a legal-looking imprint on it; the slit was already opened, and Q peeked inside, catching sight of the line _Last Will and Testament_ before quickly tucking it back away. There was a stack of pictures, some yellowed, others clearly printed very recently. And there was a letter. Q picked it up, unfolding it with treacherously shaking hands. _Q,_ it began, in James’ familiar bent writing.

Q read it through twice; the second time after a pause of about thirty seconds, during which he fumbled with his glasses and looked at everything in the room that wasn’t the innocent-looking bit of paper in his hand. Once he could breathe properly again past the sudden lump in his throat, he carefully folded the note back up. “You wretched bastard,” he muttered, his voice thick.

Well. That was that sorted. Q spent another minute or two in the room, looking around, just taking inventory—he was almost positive he recognized a few particularly interesting items from previous missions, to say nothing of the fact that the bicycle looked made for a boy of at _most_ nine—before deciding that he needed to get back home.

Wouldn’t do to let James beat him back, after all.

* * * * *

Peter and Neal returned from Peter’s call-in just before lunchtime; while they were gone, El walked Satchmo and returned some phone calls she'd been putting off.

"Yes, Dad, we're all fine now," she said, the phone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she sliced grapes for chicken salad. "Peter's been back to work full-time for about six weeks and he was much worse off than me. No lingering effects at all, as far as the doctors can tell."

"Well, they don't know that's true yet," her dad said ominously, and if El hadn't known that her dad's favorite thing in the world was government conspiracies, she might have tried to argue with him.

Instead, she said lightly, "Well, we're all feeling pretty good now, so we'll just make sure it stays that way. Speaking of, how are you and Mom doing?" Her parents hadn't gotten sick—they'd stocked up on zinc and observed the strict virus containment mandates released even before it made it to their area—but she mostly wanted to redirect the conversation.

While listening to her dad complain about her mother's latest fad diet, she heard Satch run from where he'd been sleeping near his crate into the living room; she assumed Peter and Neal were back home. The sound of the door opening proved it to be true, as well as Peter murmuring about something.

“Yep, that’s Peter,” she confirmed, as her dad interrupted himself to ask what the noise was. El permitted herself a fond eye-roll as her dad immediately latched onto his latest favorite subject: Peter’s apparent self-limiting behavior. “No, Dad, I don’t think he’s been given a raise, yet. …No, I don’t think he’s asked for one, either. Because—” El bit her lip, and then set her knife down on the counter, padding to the doorway to peer into the living room, and was so startled by what she saw that she stopped talking mid-sentence.

“Ellie?” her dad said after a moment, bringing her attention back. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Dad,” El said immediately. “Peter just brought a friend over that I wasn’t expecting, that’s all.” Distantly, she registered how easy it was becoming to fib about Neal, but that was a meditation for another time. “I have to go, though, okay? It’s almost lunchtime anyway.”

“Alright, well… tell Peter hi for me and your mother. And take care of yourself. You two need a vacation.”

“That we do,” said Elizabeth ruefully. “I love you, Dad. Bye.” She hung up, and without so much as looking at it, set the phone on the counter and went into the living room, where Peter was still standing in the middle of the room with his arms around Neal, who was slumped against him like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.

“Hi, El,” Peter said softly. Neal stirred, straightening up, and El suffered a pang when he turned to look at her and she saw how glassy his eyes were. Neal managed what might have been charitably considered half a smile, and El returned it.

She came over to help Peter guide Neal down to sit on the couch, keeping Satchmo from tripping them, and then she said quietly to Peter over Neal's head, "What happened?"

Peter shook his head once and said, "Later," but Neal spoke up.

"The Bureau found Fitch, who was one of Adler's junior accountants. I never even met the guy, and he didn't know anything, but—" His breath hitched, and Peter pulled Neal into his shoulder.

El curled herself up against Neal's side and ran her hand soothingly—at least, she hoped it was soothing—along his leg. A few minutes later, Neal took a deep breath as if he were going to speak, and El stilled her hand, waiting.

"It's not that I'm still carrying a torch for Kate," Neal said slowly, "or that I really need anything else other than knowing that Adler's permanently gone."

Peter shifted at that—he'd been the one to shoot Adler, after all—but didn't say anything, and El just squeezed Neal's knee gently.

"But," Neal said, "I guess it's just that I won't ever know all of the whys."

El sighed. It was times like these that she was reminded that while she and Peter were both older than Neal in literal years (though not by that much), in some ways he’d aged far more than they had by dint of what he’d been put through. Put himself through, Peter would probably say, but the point stood. “It’s true,” she said gently. “I’m sorry, Neal.”

It occurred to her, as Neal’s eyes flicked over to her face, that this was unlikely to be _just_ about Kate. Neal had been stoic and warm and totally solid in the weeks following his kidnapping to Thompson’s island, and true, El hadn’t been with him 24/7, but she abruptly and strongly suspected that this moment was so much more than just one thing. Maybe Neal had finally reached a breaking point.

Neal sat up then, interrupting her train of thought, straightening enough to look at her. “I know you are,” he said, and managed a whole smile this time. “And it means a lot. It’s, um, it’s—” Neal took another deep breath, and when he let it out, some of the weight on his slim shoulders seemed to go whooshing out with it. “It’s good to be reminded that I have a lot going on for me now,” he said finally. “Even if I just fell into it.” 

This time, it was Peter who smiled, one of his big hands coming up to squeeze Neal’s shoulder. “We caught you,” he said lightly. “And life’s pretty good when no one’s shooting at you or beating down your door.”

“Or stalking you, or stabbing you in the shoulder with tranquilizers,” noted Elizabeth, and Neal laughed, because it apparently never failed to delight him that out of all three of them, _El_ was the one with the slightly black sense of humor.

"One more year," Neal said, "and then no one will actually be stalking me." He lifted his foot with the GPS anklet, it having been returned almost immediately upon his disembarkation from the plane back to New York, and Peter winced.

It was a sore point, and one that they’d discussed: the fact that Peter engaging in a relationship with Neal, with or without Elizabeth's participation, was on shaky moral and legal ground. It wasn't a secret, by this point, that Peter and Neal were friends, in addition to being agent and CI, so Neal visiting Peter and El's house wasn't suspicious, but he'd only spent the night once in the two months that they'd been back.

El knew how she felt; she knew how Peter felt, and she felt reasonably certain about Neal. Whatever was between the three of them was real, solid, and long-term, and having to wait another year and three months, until Neal was off probation and was a paid consultant to the FBI, for any sort of permanence wouldn't change that. It wouldn't necessarily be easy; El had been married long enough to realize that no relationship was without its bumps.

That having been said, El was also aware that trio relationships weren't exactly the norm, and even months after the GPS was off the best they'd be able to say in most company was that Neal was their friend. She could deal with that, though.

She could deal with the sneaking around, and the uncertainty, and the worry of watching both of her men walk into dangerous situations time after time. She wouldn’t _like_ it all the time, but she could deal with it. Because the end result was so very worth it.

The thought lit a spark in her, and she leaned forward, startling Peter and Neal out of the short moment by pressing a kiss to Neal’s mouth, short but sweet. Neal made a noise, lost in Elizabeth’s mouth, and then his hand came up to catch El’s cheek, returning her kiss. “Mm,” said Peter, and El could feel him staring. She broke away after a few more seconds, straightening up and tucking a strand of hair out of her face.

“Hi,” said Neal, and grinned stupidly.

“Cheer up, buttercup,” said El. She reached across to lace her fingers with her husband’s, and Peter squeezed her hand in his.

“We’ll get there,” Peter said. “Even if it takes awhile.” Neal turned back to meet his gaze, and Peter smiled at him, the good smile, the one El liked the best because it reminded her of everything she loved most about her husband: that he was solid, and smart, and loyal, and so good it made her teeth hurt.

Neal smiled back, and his smile was as real as Peter’s, no trace of a mask. “Yeah, we will,” he said.

* * * * *

Moneypenny called as Q was getting out of his second cab; he answered and said, "Moneypants, my darling, I didn't leave early to get away from you."

"Of course you didn't," she said lightly. "Why, then, boffin, did you leave?"

"Did you call just to find me?" he asked, distracted for a moment by the locks to his apartment.

"Well, yes," she said, fondly amused. "I went looking for you. You weren't there. Malhotra's being honored by his department next week and he invited us to the ceremony."

"Oh," Q said, and tucked the phone into his shoulder so he could pick up Carly. "Of course we'll be there. Unless it’s a week from Sunday? We’re leaving that day." A week from Sunday started their long-overdue vacation to Australia; Q had already invested in medication to ease his jitters during the flight, but the best medicine by far would be the pincer-tight grip he kept on James’ hand for the duration of the trip over. Carly squirmed until he caught her back feet, and then she started purring.

“No, it’s next Thursday. Are you speaking for your pocket double-oh as well, then?” Carly purred louder as Q shuffled into the apartment, and he spared a moment to be glad that there was no one to attack him the minute he set foot inside, or else he’d surely be an easy target, occupied as he was with his arm full of squirming cat.

“Am I what?” Q said distractedly. “Are you baiting him deliberately now? He’s hardly my pet, although I suppose the ruined clothing and interrupted sleep does fit rather well.”

“Does it, now,” said a deep voice from the kitchen, with an unmistakable note of amusement. Q felt his heart speed up for a moment, and he shuffled towards the kitchen, poking his head around the corner to behold James at the island in the center of the room, in the process of fixing a pot of tea. James glanced at him, a faint smile twitching his lips, and Q lost what Moneypenny was saying in his ear for a moment, thoroughly distracted by the brilliance of those eyes.

“I,” he said intelligently. “Uh.”

In his ear, Moneypenny sighed. “Pass the phone to James, will you?” she said, surprising him.

Q did, fingers a little numb; he moved to finish the tea while Moneypenny repeated herself to James, who made appropriate listening noises. The familiar, repetitive motions of measuring out the correct amount of leaves into the pot and putting milk in his own cup while he waited for it to steep reset his brain. By the time James handed the mobile back to him, he was able to take it and say his farewells to Moneypenny with a reasonable amount of aplomb.

"So what brings you home early?" Q asked, after he'd hung up.

"I could ask you the same," James remarked, picking up the teapot and his own cup. He gestured towards the door, and Q followed him to the sitting room. "But," he said, once they'd sit down, the tea on the table between them, "I know you had a Skype date with our American friends. More interesting, I suppose, would be the answer to, 'and where were you just now?'"

"Ah, yes, might be," Q said, not missing that James had evaded his question. He fidgeted for a moment, and then decided he might as well jump into it. "So while I was in isolation, you brought me a chocolate bar."

“I did,” said James impassively. He might have been talking about car racing for how cavalier he sounded. Q bit the inside of his cheek and debated the merits of abandoning this conversation in favor of crawling into James’ lap to try to break that careful facade. Tempting, he thought, but no.

“You wrote something on it,” he said instead. “An address.”

James inclined his head slightly. “I did,” he said again. “Though I was beginning to wonder if perhaps you’d missed it. You had quite a lot on your plate at the time.”

“ _That’s_ an understatement,” said Q, and then he found that he had to set down his mug of tea altogether, his normally-steady hands abruptly traitorous. “And I know that we’ve—had a bit of back-and-forth like this before, but James…” Q inhaled, gesturing vaguely, then clasping his hands together and letting them fall into his lap. “I wish you had just told me.”

“This way was better,” James said, but Q’s agitation must have been more obvious than Q thought, because James set aside his tea too, leaning forward slightly, his eyes trailing over Q’s face. Q hesitated only a moment before taking the invitation and going to him; James’ arms went around him easily, settling Q in his lap, leaning sideways against his chest.

“You’re an arse sometimes,” Q said, because words were hard when you weren’t thinking clearly and also, James _was_ an arse. James’ mouth quirked, but Q shook his head. “It’s all well and good for you to leave me something like that, but James, can you—can you for once in your life stop thinking only in terms of what’ll happen when you’re dead? I want all those things you promised me _now_.”

"Ah," James said, and his arms tightened around Q. He was silent for a couple of minutes, but a subtle tension in his arms and chest made Q think that he was, in fact, going to respond; it was merely taking a moment to corral his words. Q waited.

James spoke, finally, voice rich with emotion. "It's difficult to imagine a world where I live to old age, and you will likely outlive me anyway," he said. "But in the event that that happens, I promise that I will be here, with you. I still don't know what I'll be doing—probably growing fat with inactivity, shuffling papers around. But I've got a few years to figure that out," he said, with a one-sided grin that Q looked up just in time to see. "And I can't think of anyone I'd rather figure that out with than you."

“That’s all I want,” said Q roughly, after several seconds where it was suspiciously difficult to breathe. James smiled, cupping Q’s face in one big, calloused hand. He rubbed his thumb along Q’s cheekbone, and then James kissed him, slow and infinitely more sweet than Q would ever have credited him for, once upon a time. But James had proven him wrong, in so many ways.

At length, James pulled back enough to let him breathe, his arm still lashed securely around Q’s waist. “This means I’m off the hook for making dinner, right?” he said. “Takeaway from now until we’re both too fat to move.”

“I take it all back,” said Q. “I’ll just have cats and die alone. In a great lumpy knitted jumper. They’ll find me under a pile of electronics.”

James snorted. “You have that jumper now,” he pointed out. “You insist upon wearing it all the time.”

“You never complained before,” Q said.

“That’s because last time it was all you were wearing,” James noted, and Q let out a deeply undignified noise as James’ hand snuck into the back of Q’s trousers, seeking treasure, and shortly thereafter Carly vacated the room, tail held high to demonstrate her displeasure at being so thoroughly ignored.

Later, they’d have time to plan all sorts of things—from their scuba-diving excursion to the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Cairns to the details of actually having James move in with Q. Later, they would talk about what other things they should do to bind themselves together as legally as they already were in all the other ways that counted. And later, in the dark, on missions when James was long from his side and his bed was cold and empty, Q would re-read the note James left him and find warmth in it:

_Q,_

_If you are reading this, there’s a reasonable chance I’m dead. Sorry about that. If I’m not dead, you can take it out of my hide once I’m out of medical. But this is just here to let you know what the will says, so you don’t have to read through the bloody thing yourself. Everything that’s left of me, every part of me that was ever worth anything—it’s in this room, and I want you to have it. I can think of nowhere safer for it than with you, since you already have my heart. Love always, your James._

But right now, Q let himself sink into the moment, because he knew that for as long as there was life in both of them and they never took it for granted, there would be a later.

_~fin~_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The painting, in case you forgot: [Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose](http://jssgallery.org/paintings/Carnation_Lily_Lily_Rose.htm) by John Singer Sargent. 
> 
> And the quote from which the story gets its name, is, of course, from the translation of Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil":
> 
>  
> 
> _Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you._  
> 


End file.
